Oh, how decadent these Martians were! Burke,
Barnes and the rest of the Conquerors laughed
loudly at the dusty shrines, those crude and
homely temples in the desert. More softly laughed
the Martians, who dreamed of laughing last....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When the Martians had built the village of Kinkaaka there had beenwater in the canal, a cool, level sweep of green water from thenorthern icecap. Now there was none, and Kinkaaka clung to the upperswell of the bank and curved its staggered residential terraces liketragic brows over the long slope of sand and clay, the dead wallbaked criss-cross by the sun, that bore at its deep juncture with theopposite bank the pitiful, straggling trench cut by Mars' last movingwaters an untold time ago.
Kinkaaka's other side, away from the canal, was coated rust-red bythe desert winds that came with sunset. Here were the crumblingmarket arenas of the ancient traders, the great mounds of undergroundwarehouses long empty; and here now, with Mars' conquest, wasthe "native" section into whose sandstone huts the village's fewinhabitants were shoved firmly, but not brutally, to rest when theyweren't needed to work.
Like most of the Conquerors, Jack Burke and his companions preferredthe canal side of Kinkaaka. There they could sit in the stone-coolshade of the Expedition Restaurant and look through the broad glasslesswindows down the sun-scalded canal bank, across to the opposite slopewith its dotting of nomad caves, the desert beyond and the red-taintedblue of the sky.
"Happy day we came to Mars," said Jack Burke. He picked up his stonemug and drank with a shudder.
He was big and brown, typical of the Conquerors, and spoke, as theyall did when within earshot of natives, the Martian dialect which theLinguistics Squad had translated and reasoned to completion from thepages of script found in the metal cairn, half-buried in desert sandsand upon which they had conveniently almost landed their space-cubeupon arrival two days ago.
That was one of the dicta of the Psychologists: Always speak the nativetongue, and learn it preferably from graphics or a specimen beforecontacting the native collective.
There were other policies as strange, or more so; but thePsychologists, off-world in the home-ship and poring over thetranslations beamed to them, must know what they were doing.
Barnes looked up in quick response to Burke's sarcasm. Of the threeConquerors at this table, he was the smallest. He fiddled nervouslywith his one-pronged fork, turning a piece of badly cooked huj overand over, not looking at it.
"That," he said, and he included the huj, "is a mouthful. Theredoesn't seem to be a Martian in this village who can cook worth adamn, and you—" this to the pasty faced Martian who stood attentivelyby—"are no exception. You're getting off easy with this job, Martian.Or would you rather go back to digging up history with the rest of yourtribe?"
"I am sorry." The Martian advanced and bobbed his head. "Thepreparation of your foodstuffs is difficult for me to comprehend. Wouldyou care to try something else, perhaps?"
Barnes skidded the fork onto the plate and put his hands flat on thestone table. "No. Just take this away."
The Conquerors watched the creature as it moved silently off with theplate of huj. All except Randolph, the youngest of the trio.
He sat nearest the stone-silled window, his gaze reaching out distantlyover the sandscape. On the far bank of the canal he c