Flamedown

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  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction August 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  FLAMEDOWN

  By H. B. FYFE

  _It was, of course, one Hell of an ending for a trip to Mars--_

  Illustrated by Summers

  * * * * *

  Charlie Holmes lost touch with reality amid rending and shatteringsounds that lingered dimly. Blackness engulfed him in a wave of agony.

  He was not sure exactly when the possibility of opening his eyesoccurred to him. Vaguely, he could sense--"remember" was toodefinite--much tugging and hauling upon his supine body. It doubtlessseemed justifiable, but he flinched from recalling more clearly thatwhich must have been so extremely unpleasant.

  Gently, now, he tried rolling his head a few inches right, then left.When it hurt only one-tenth as much as he feared, he let his eyesopen.

  "Hel-lo!" rasped the bulbous creature squatting beside his pallet.

  Charlie shut his eyes quickly, and very tightly.

  Something with a dampish, spongy tip, probably one of the grape-redtentacles he had glimpsed, prodded his shoulder.

  "_Hel-lo!_" insisted the scratchy voice.

  Charlie peeped warily, was trapped at it, and opened his eyesresignedly.

  "Where'n'ell am I?" he inquired.

  It sounded very trite, even in his confused condition. Sections of thedark red skin before him, especially on the barrel-shaped belly,quivered as he spoke.

  "Surely," grated the remarkable voice, "you remember something?"

  "The crash!" gasped Charlie, sitting up abruptly.

  He held his breath, awaiting the knifing pain it seemed natural toexpect. When he felt none, he cautiously fingered his ribs, and then ahorrid thought prompted him to wiggle his bare toes. Everything seemedto be in place.

  He lay in a small room, on a thin pallet of furs. Floor and walls ofslick, ocher clay reflected the bright outside light pouring through awide doorway.

  "What's all the sand?" he demanded, squinting at the heatwavesoutside.

  "You do not recognize it? Look again, Earthman!"

  _Earthman!_ thought Charlie. _It must be real: I can still see him.What a whack on the head I must have got!_

  "You are in pain?" asked the creature solicitously.

  "Oh ... no. Just ... I can't remember. The crash ... and then--"

  "Ah, yes. You have not been conscious for some time." His reddish hostrippled upward to stand more or less erect upon three thick tentacles."Even with us, memory is slow after shock. And you may be uneasy inthe lighter gravity."

  _Light gravity!_ reflected Charlie. _This can only mean--MARS! Sure!That must be it--I was piloting a rocket and cracked up somewhere onMars._

  It felt right to him. He decided that the rest of his memory wouldreturn.

  "Are you able to rise?" asked the other, extending a helpfultentacle.

  The Earthman managed to haul himself stiffly to his feet.

  "Say, my name is Holmes," he introduced himself dizzily.

  "I am Kho Theki. In your language, learned years since from otherspacemen, I might say 'Fiery Canalman.'"

  "_Has_ to be Mars," muttered Charlie under his breath. "What a bump!When can you show me what's left of the ship?"

  "There will be no time," answered the Martian.

  Bunches of small muscles twitched here and there across the front ofhis round, pudgy head. Charlie was getting used to the single eye,half the size of an orange and not much duller. With imagination, thevarious lumps and organs surrounding it might be considered a face.

  "The priestesses will lead the crowd here," predicted Kho. "They knowI took an Earthman, and I fear they have finished with the others."

  "Finished with--_What_?" demanded the Earthman, shaking his head inhopes of clearing it enough to figure out what was wrong.

  "It has been an extremely dry season." Kho rippled his tentacles andmoved lissomely to the doorway, assuming a grotesquely furtive postureas he peered out. "The people are maddened by the drought. The will bearoused to sacrifice you to the Canal Gods, like the others whosurvived."

  "Canal gods!" croaked Charlie. "This can't be right! Aren't youcivilized here? I can't be the only Earthman they've seen!"

  "It is true that Earthmen are perfectly safe at most times."

  "But the laws! The earth consul--"

  Kho snapped the tip of a tentacle at him.

  "The canals are low. You can feel the heat and dryness for yourself.The crowds are inflamed by temple prophecies. And then, your ship,flaming down from the skies--"

  He snapped all this tentacle tips at once.

  * * * * *

  From somewhere outside, a threatening murmur became audible. It was anunholy blend of rasping shouts and shriller chanting, punctuated bynotes of a brassy gong. As Charlie listened, the volume rosenoticeably.

  Kho reached out with one tentacle and wrapped six inches about theEarthman's wrist. When he plunged through the doorway, Charlieperforce went right with him.

  Whipping around a corner of the hut, he had time for a quick squint atthe chanters. Kho alone had looked weirdly alien. Two hundred likehim--!

  Led by a dozen bulgy figures in streaming robes, masked and decoratedin brass, the natives were swarming over the sand toward thefugitives. They had evidently been busy. Above a distant cluster oflow buildings, a column of smoke spiraled upward suggestively.

  Kho led the way at a flowing gallop over a sandstone ridge and down along slope toward what looked like the junction of two gullies.

  "The canal," he wheezed. "With luck, we may find a boat."

  A frenzied screech went up as the mob topped the ridge and regainedsight of them. Charlie, having all he could do to breathe in the thinair, tried to shake his wrist loose. Now that they were descending theslope, he saw where the water was. They slid down a four-foot drop ina cloud of fine, choking dust, and were faced by several puntlikecraft stranded on the mudflat beyond. The water was fifty feetfurther.

  "We should have gone down-stream," said Kho, "but we can wade."

  Their momentum carried them several steps into the mud before Charlierealized how wrong that was. Then, as they floundered about to regainthe solid bank, it became apparent that they would never reach it intime.

  "They are catching us," rasped Kho.

  The howling crowd was scarcely a hundred yards away. The heat wavesshimmered above the reddish desert sand until the Martians wereblurred before Charlie's burning eyes. His feet churned the clingingmud, and he felt as if he were running in a dream.

  "I'm sorry you're in it, too," he panted.

  "It does not matter. I act as I must."

  The Earthman rubbed sweat from his eyes with the back of a muddyhand.

  "Everything is wrong," he mumbled. "I still can't remember cracking upthe ship. Why did I always want to be a rocket pilot? Well ... I mademy bed!"

  The oncoming figures wavered and blurred in the heat. Kho emitted agrating sound reminiscent of an Earthly chuckle.

  "As do all you mortals--who finally have to lie in them," he rasped."I will tell you now, since I can carry this episode little farther.You have never piloted a spaceship."

  Charlie gaped at him incredulously.

  "You ... you ... what about the wreck?"

  "It was a truck that hit you, Charles Holmes. You have no more sensethan to be crossing the street with you
r nose in a magazine justpurchased on the corner."

  With some dulled, creeping, semi-detached facet of his mind, Charlienoted that the running figures still floated above the sand withoutactually drawing near.

  "Are you--Do you mean I'm ... d-d-d--?"

  "Of course you are," grated Kho amiably. "And in view of certainactions during your life, there will be quite a period of--shall wesay--probation. When I was assigned to you, your reading habitssuggested an amusing series of variations. You cannot know how dull itis to keep frustrating the same old dreams!"

  "Amusing?" repeated Charlie, beyond caring about the whimper in histone.

  The mob was dissolving into thin smoke, and the horizon was shrinking.

  Kbo himself was altering into something redder of skin but equippedwith a normal number of limbs, discounting the barbed tail. Theconstant heat of the "desert" began, at last, to seem explicable.

  "For me a great amusement," grinned Kho, displaying hideous tusks."Next time, I'll be a Venusian. You will lose again. Then we can visitother planets, and stars ... oh, we shall see a lot of each other!"

  He cheerfully polished one horn with a clawed finger.

  "_You_ won't enjoy it!" he promised.

  * * * * *