Read Ebook: Monsoons of Death by Vance Gerald

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Ebook has 208 lines and 10437 words, and 5 pages

Ward set his grip down and glanced about at the chart-covered walls, the plain, badly scuffed furniture and he was not particularly enthused at the prospect of being cooped up in this hot little oven of a room with Halliday.

"What about the other buildings?" he asked. "Surely there'd be room there for me to bunk."

"We use those building for equipment," Halliday said. "And besides, this building is safer."

Ward glanced at the little man with a faint, ironic smile.

"Is there something here to be afraid of?" His tone was blandly polite, but he could not completely conceal an undercurrent of contempt.

"I don't mean to alarm you, Lieutenant," Halliday said, "but this area of Mars is not quite the safest place in the universe." He removed his thick glasses with a nervous little gesture and smiled uncertainly at Ward. "I really think it wiser for you to sleep here."

"Unless that's an order," Ward said, "I'd rather sleep in comfort in one of the other buildings and take my chances on your bogy-men catching me."

Halliday replaced his glasses. He was no longer smiling.

"I'm afraid, Lieutenant, you must consider it as an order."

He turned slowly and re-checked the huge gleaming lock on the door, then walked to a littered, dusty desk in one corner of the room and sat down. It was obvious that the discussion was ended.

Ward shrugged and carried his grip into a small windowless storeroom that was directly off the main room of the small structure. There were bales of supplies, a cot and a stool. A vague musty odor permeated the air. He tossed his grip onto the cot, stripped off his tunic and walked back into the room where Halliday was seated at his desk.

Halliday looked up with a smile and removed his glasses with a characteristic nervous movement of his thin hands.

"Not exactly the choicest accommodations, eh?" he said, in an attempt at heartiness, which struck Ward as being almost pathetic.

"I'll get by," Ward said. He loosened the collar of his shirt and glanced at the massive steel door, closed and tightly locked. "Any objection to letting in a little air?" he asked. "It's pretty close in here."

Halliday smiled and his eyes flicked to the closed door. He put his glasses on again and spent quite a time adjusting them to his thin nose.

"I'm afraid we'll have to put up with the closeness," he said.

Ward sighed and sat down in a chair facing Halliday.

"You're afraid of something," he said bluntly. "Supposing you tell me about it."

"As a matter of fact, I was meaning to," Halliday said. "You see, on this section we're pretty well isolated from the rest of the Earth stations on Mars. We receive all supplies and mail by a direct materialization unit. No space craft puts in here. We're here all alone and if anything happened to us all the data and work that has been compiled might be lost."

As Halliday removed his glasses again with a quick aimless gesture, Ward thought, "A lot you care about the records and data. It's your skin you want to save."

Halliday coughed and replaced his glasses.

"This area is inhabited by a species of creature which I do not believe has been classified. I do not know if they are human or if they possess intelligence. I do not even know if they are 'alive' in the sense that we speak of life. Possibly their energy is of electrical or carboniferous origin, or it could be even vegetable in nature. As you see I know little enough about these neighbors of ours, but I do know that they are dangerous. They resent the work that is being done here." Halliday frowned and twisted a pencil in his hands. "I'm not even sure of that. Possibly they are without rational motivation at all. It may be that they are merely moved to action by the sight of another object in motion. But whatever their reason, they have been very troublesome. That, really, is all I know about them. And that is the reason that I exercise such care. I have a small periscope installed on the roof and before I unlock the door I study the entire surrounding terrain to be sure there are no Raspers in sight."

"Why do you call them Raspers?" Ward asked.

"Because of a peculiar sound that seems to emanate from them," Halliday explained. "My former assistant and I had to call them something and Raspers seemed as logical as anything else."

"Have you ever seen one of these--er--Raspers?" Ward asked.

Ward crossed his legs and lit a cigarette casually.

"Can these things be killed?" he asked.

"I don't know," Halliday answered. "The two chances I had I was too scared to find out."

Ward felt a cold anger against this man growing in him. This man had been entrusted with the task of surveying the atmospheric conditions of this area--a vital, desperately necessary job--and he was dawdling along, timidly hugging the cover of this fortress because of a stupid, half-imaginary fear of the natives of the area. He felt his cheeks growing hot.

"We can't stay cooped up here indefinitely," he said. "How about the work we're supposed to be doing. Or does that bother you?"

Halliday looked at him queerly and then dropped his eyes. He fiddled nervously with his glasses.

Ward suddenly found the gesture maddening.

"For Pete's sake!" he exploded. "Leave 'em on, or leave 'em off, one or the other. That's apparently your only job here, taking those damn glasses off and putting them back on again."

"I'm sorry," Halliday said quickly, apologetically. "It's just a habit I guess. It's a little something to break the nervous tension of being here all alone, thinking...."

His voice trailed off and his hand moved nervously toward his glasses and then fell back limply in his lap.

"About the work here," he said in a mild, controlled voice, "we are forced to work on a definitely limited schedule. I have field apparatus located at points several miles distant from here. But we can't venture out to take the necessary readings until the weather is propitious."

"What's the weather got to do with our taking readings?" Ward demanded.

"Simply this: There are certain periods of intense precipitation on this area of Mars. These periods are accompanied by high velocity winds. The atmospheric disturbance reaches monsoon proportions. During such periods, for some reason, the Raspers are exceptionally active. Something in the nature of the monsoon reacts on them with very savage results. They seem to feed on the electric disturbances in the atmosphere. They go wild during these changes in the weather and search for any moving thing to destroy. In some manner they are able to cover enormous distances during the monsoon and they can travel with incredible speed. When a monsoon is threatening I never leave the station."

Ward listened in growing irritation to this explanation.

"How often do you have monsoons here?" he demanded.

"Unfortunately, quite often," Halliday answered. "All of my instruments indicate now that one is brewing. I haven't been able to do more than a few hours of work in the last two months. I've been waiting for the weather to break, but so far it hasn't."

"Do you mean to tell me," Ward said incredulously, "that you've been sitting here, twiddling your thumbs for the past two months because you're afraid to take a chance on a wind blowing up?"

"That is exactly what I mean," Halliday said. "But it isn't the wind I'm afraid of. It's the things that come with the wind that make any field work impossible. I've learned a few things about the Raspers in my three years and one is that it doesn't pay to give them a chance. That's all they need. That's all they're waiting for."

Ward stood up impatiently and jammed his fists into his pockets. It took all of his self control not to let his anger and contempt for the man explode in roaring fury.

"I can't understand your attitude," he said at last, through tight lips. "I'm green and new here. I don't know anything about the set-up except what you've told me. But I know from your own admission that you've never seen these things you're so mortally afraid of, you've never stood up to them and given them a taste of ray juice to think about, you don't really know anything about them, except that you're terrified of the very thought of them. That isn't a reasonable attitude. Only one kind of man thinks that way, and that's a man without a touch of starch in his backbone, or a bit of honest-to-goodness guts in his make-up. If you want to hug this place like a scared school-girl that's all right, but I'll be double-damned if I'm going to let any superstitious nonsense keep me from doing the job I was sent here to do."

"That is a very brave speech, Lieutenant," Halliday said, "and I admire you for it. But you are going to do as I say in spite of your own opinions. We will stay here and take no unnecessary chances until our instruments indicate that the monsoon weather has passed. That is an order."

Ward choked back his wrath. He glared at Halliday for an instant, then wheeled and strode into the small storeroom that was to serve as his sleeping quarters. He banged the door shut and sat down on the edge of the cot, his fingers opening and closing nervously.

He wasn't sure just what he'd do, but he didn't intend to stand for Halliday's craven policy of hiding in a locked room, instead of doing the work his country expected him to do. Halliday was a psychopathic case; his mind was full of a hundred and one imagined horrors and they kept him from doing his job. There was little wonder that he had been three years attempting to compile the information that should have been gathered in three months.

The man was so terrified of imagined dangers that he was helpless to act. Ward felt a moment of pity for him, the pity the brave invariably feel for the weak and cowardly. But he also felt a cold and bitter contempt for the man who had allowed his own fear and timidity to hold up the important work of accumulating data on this section of the planet. If he wasn't man enough to do the job, he should have at least been man enough to admit it.

Ward decided that the next day he'd have the thing out. He undressed slowly and stretched out on the narrow cot, but sleep was a long time in coming.

When he stepped from his room the next day he saw that Halliday was standing in the doorway gazing out over the dull gray Martian landscape.

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