Slaves of Mars

'I am here for you' says Arri, almost shyly. 'I am with you.'

'I am with you. Forever. I will never leave you.' Spoken in a sudden wave of long-suppressed emotion. A place in Hades set aside for sodomites? Yet this could also be a fugitive paradise.

After a while the door is unsealed and he's led back to the bridge. With the urgencies dealt with, Meryk Tharkus has time on his hands. He gestures for Homer to sit, although his attention is drawn away by the vast panorama spreading out below. The shadows of five sky-ships ripple and slither over dunes of ochre grit, yet follow the knife-cut of a broad canal towards the horizon.

'Watch' says the Meryk, indicating a glassy cube on the table between them, within which moving shapes can be observed. Homer concentrates. The technology is imprecise. But as he focuses he can discern steaming jungle growth and monstrous creatures. Dinosaurs? 'We adapted one of our sky-ships to move through the ether between worlds. The heroic crew who returned died in appalling pain from lesions and skin-cancers. But this is a record they took of the planet on which you claim to originate. You can appreciate that I have doubts concerning what you say.'

Jurassic? Or Mesozoic? He wasn't sure. Just how much time had he slipped through? Millions or billions of years? Homer has no idea of the scale involved. 'There are hazardous radiation levels in the space between worlds. That's why your crew died. Our ship is protectively shielded. You can locate my shuttle in the desert by the sapphire cliffs... those itinerate bounty-hunters can doubtless direct you, and you'll learn all you need to know about voyages across the solar system.'

Meryk Tharkus seems to be considering his words. There are different images swimming in the glassy cube now. 'Titan is a world of frost-forests and slow ice-creatures' he comments, almost abstractly. As though musing to himself. 'Yet there are cyclopean ruins of cities so old that they precede even our earliest cultures. There are folktales among certain of our people concerning beings with supernatural powers who descended from the skies. They built their own communities, but were gradually absorbed into our populace. Some academics amongst us believe that, as Titan cooled and became increasingly inhospitable, that those city-builders migrated here, to Mars. And that now, as our planet approaches exhausted extinction, despite ancient technologies that maintain our atmosphere and irrigation, that we too must migrate inwards, sunwards. Eventually.'

'In which case, you will need the radiation-shielding from my shuttle.'

The Meryk meets his gaze with a curious expression. 'Captain Homer Tresco, of Planet Earth. Perhaps. Perhaps...'

Homer stands slowly. Mesmerised by what he can see. At the nexus point of a canal grid was the kind of city he'd only ever glimpsed on the garish art-covers of 1940s pulp SF magazines. Breathtaking emerald spires and towers circled by the graceful curves of skyways, the glint of lakes and gardens between, with broad paved promenades along the canal-sides paced by tall beautiful people. He felt a choking in his throat. This was a Mars he could learn to love.

BY TRISTAN TROTSKY