The Coming of the Terrans - Leigh Brackett(1), ebook, Temp
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To some of us, Mars has always been the UltimaThule, the golden Hesperides, the ever-beckoningland of compelling fascination. Voyagers, electronicand human, have begun the business of reducingthese dreams to cold, hard, ruinous fact. But as weknow, in the affairs of men and Martians, merefact runs a poor second to Truth, which is mightyand shall prevail. Therefore I offer you these legendsof Old Mars as true tales, inviting all dreary realitiesto keep a respectful distance.I can vouch for every one of these adventures.After all, I was there.? LEIGH BRACKETTTHE COMING OFTHE TERRANSBYLEIGH BRACKETTace booksA Division of Charter Communications Inc.A GROSSET & DUNLAP COMPANY1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10036THE COMING OF THE TERRANSCopyright , 1967, by Leigh Brackett HamiltonMars Minus Bisha, The Beast-Jewel of Mars, Copy-right, 1954, 1948, for Planet Stories magazine. The Last Days of Shandakor, Copyright, 1952, for Startling Stories. The Road to Sinharat, Copyright, 1963, for Amazing Stories. Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon, Copyright, 1964, for Fantasy and Science Fiction.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.All characters in this hook are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.An ACE BookPrinted in U.S.A.Other ACE BOOKS byLEIGH BRACKETT you will enjoy:THE BIG JUMPTHE HALFLINGTHE SWORD OF RHIANNONTHE SECRET OF SIN HARATandPEOPLE OF THE TALISMANALPHA CENTAURI?OR DIE!THE NEMESIS FROM TERRACHRONOLOGY1998: THE BEAST-JEWEL OF MARS 12016: MARS MINUS BISHA 612024: THE LAST DAYS OF SHANDAKOR 912031: PURPLE PRIESTESS OFTHE MAD MOON 1372038: THE ROAD TO SINHARAT 1631998: THE BEAST-JEWEL OF MARSIBurk Winters remained in the passenger section while the Starflight made her landing at Kahora Port. He did not think that he could bear to see another man, not even one he liked as much as he did Johnny Niles, handle the controls of the ship that had been his for so long.He did not wish even to say goodbye to Johnny, but there was no avoiding it. The young officer was waiting for him as he came down the ramp, and the deep concern he felt was not hidden in the least by his casually hearty grin.Johnny held out his hand. "So long, Burk. You've earned this leave. Have fun with it."Burk Winters looked out over the vast tarmac that spread for miles across the ochre desert. An orderly, roaring confusion of trucks and flatcars and men and ships?ore ships, freighters, tramps, sleek liners like the Starflight, bearing the colors of three planets and a dozen colonies, but still arrogantly and predominantly Terran.Johnny followed his gaze and said softly, "It always gives you a thrill, doesn't it?"Winters did not answer. Miles away, safe from the thundering rocket blasts, the glassite dome of Kahora, Trade City for Mars, rose jewel-like out of the red sand. The little sun stared wearily down and the ancient hills considered it, and the old, old wandering wind passed over it, and it seemed as though the planet bore Kahora and its spaceport with patience, as though it were a small local infection that would soon be gone.He had forgotten Johnny Niles. He had forgotten everything but his own dark thoughts. The young officer studied him with covert pity, and he did not know it.Burk Winters was a big man, and a tough man, tempered by years of deep-space flying. The same glare of naked light that had burned his skin so dark had bleached his hair until it was almost white, and just in the last few months his gray eyes seemed to have caught and held a spark of that pitiless radiance. The easy good nature was gone out of them, and the lines that laughter had shaped around his mouth had deepened now into bitter scars.A big man, a hard man, but a man who was no longer in control of himself. All during the voyage out from Earth he had chain-smoked the little Venusian cigarettes that have a sedative effect. He was smoking one now, and even so he could not keep his hands steady nor stop the everlasting tic in his right cheek."Burk." Johnny's voice came to him from a great distance; "Burk, it's none of my business, but . . ." He hesitated, then blurted out, "Do you think Mars is good for you, now?"Quite abruptly, Winters said, "Take good care of the Starflight, Johnny. Goodbye."He went away, down the ramp. The pilot stared after him.The Second Officer came up to Johnny. "That guy has sure gone to pieces," he said.Johnny nodded. He was angry, because he had come up under Winters and he loved him."The damn fool." he said. "He shouldn't have come here." He looked out over the mocking immensity of Mars and added, "His girl was lost out there, somewhere. They never found her body."* * *A spaceport taxi took Burk Winters into Kahora, and Mars vanished. He was back in the world of the Trade Cities, which belong to all planets, and none.Vhia on Venus, N'York on Earth, Sun City in Mercury's Twilight Belt, the glassite refuges of the Outer Worlds, they were all alike. They were dedicated to the coddling of wealth and greed, little paradises where millions were made and lost in comfort, where men and women from all over the Solar System could expend their feverish energies without regard for such annoyances as weather and gravitation.Other things than the making of money were done in the Trade Cities. The lovely plastic buildings, the terraces and gardens and the glowing web of moving walks that spun them together, offered every pleasure and civilized vice of the known worlds.Winters hated the Trade Cities. He was used to the elemental honesty of space. Here the speech, the dress, even the air one breathed, were artificial.And he had a deeper reason than that for his hatred.Yet he had left N'York in feverish haste to reach Kahora, and now that he was here he felt that he could not endure even the delay caused by the necessity of crossing the city. He sat tensely on the edge of the seat, and his nervous twitching grew worse by the minute.When finally he reached his destination, he could not hold the money for his fare. He dropped the plastic tokens on the floor and left the driver to scramble for them.He stood for a moment, looking up at the ivory facade before him. It was perfectly plain, the epitome of expensive unpretentiousness. Above the door, in small letters of greenish silver, was the one Martian word: Shanga."The return," he translated. "The going-back." A strange and rather terrible smile crossed his face, very briefly. Then he opened the door and went inside.Subdued lighting, comfortable lounges, soft music, the perfect waiting room. There were half a dozen men and women there, all Terrans. They wore the fashionably simple white tunic of the Trade Cities, which set off the magnificent blaze of their jewelry and the exotic styles in which they dressed their hair.Their faces were pallid and effeminate, scored with the haggard marks of life lived under the driving tension of a super-modern age.A Martian woman sat in an alcove, behind a glassite desk. She was dark, sophisticatedly lovely. Her costume was the artfully adapted short robe of ancient Mars, and she wore no ornament. Her slanting topaz eyes regarded Burk Winters with professional pleasantness, but deep in them he could see the scorn and the pride of a race so old that the Terran exquisites of the Trade Cities were only crude children beside it."Captain Winters." she said. "How nice to see you again."He was in no mood for conventional pleasantries. "I want to see Kor Hal," he said. "Now.""I'm afraid . . ." she began. Then she took another look at Winters' face and turned to the intercom. Presently she said, "You may go in."He pushed open the door that led into the interior of the building, which consisted almost entirely of a huge solarium. Glassite walls enclosed it. Around the sides were many small cells, containing only a padded table. The roofs of the cells were quartz, and acted as mammoth lenses.Skirting the solarium on the way to Kor Hal's office, Winters' mouth twisted with contempt as he looked through the transparent wall.An exotic forest blossomed there. Trees, ferns, brilliant flowers, soft green sward, a myriad of birds. And through this mock-primitive playground wandered the men and women who were devotees of Shanga.They lay first on the padded tables and let the radiation play with them. Winters knew. Neuro-psychic therapy, the doctors called it. Heritage of the lost wisdom of old Mars. Specific for the jangled nerves and overwrought emotions of modern man, who lived too fast in too complex an environment.You lie there and the radiation tingles through you. Your glandular balance tips a little. Your brain slows down. All sorts of strange and pleasant things happen inside of you, while the radiation tinkers with nerves and reflexes and metabolism. And pretty soon you're a child again, in an evolutionary sort of way.Shanga, the going-back. Mentally, and just a tiny bit physically, back to the primitive, until the effect wore off and the normal balance restored itself. And even then, for a while, you felt better and happier, because you'd had one hell of a rest, from everything.Their pampered white bodies incongruously clad in skins and bits of colored cloth, the Earthlings of Kahora played and fought among the trees, and their worries were simple ones...
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