Nevertheless, John Carter ordered them to quit for the night after they'd taken a reading to determine if the tunnel did enter the cliff.

'You can conserve the power in your lights if you work in daylight. And we can observe you better.'

Orme didn't want to agree, but he had to. After validating that the tunnel did go beneath the cliff, he told Bronski they had to get back.

'Tomorrow we'll put in a full day. We'll be refreshed. It was the landing that took everything out of us. Even though we exercised on the Aries during the trip, we aren't in tiptop shape. Null gravity is insidious; it weakens you after a long time.'

Bronski said, 'Yes.' His tone indicated that he knew this and Orme knew that he knew it. But it was better to talk repetitions and banalities than to listen to the silence. The stars were out now, shining more brightly than in Earth's thick atmosphere. Being at the bottom of the canyon was like standing at the bottom of a well. The stars they could see looked baleful, as if they didn't like the presence of these two aliens.

Orme knew that his reaction was due to his fatigue, the feeling of insignificance in relation to the towering wall, the eeriness of the entire situation, the feeling that somewhere down there were beings who could be menacing. Just how, he didn't know, since Earth people represented no danger to Martians - if they existed - and there was no reason he could think of why they should believe two aliens to be dangerous.

But the buried spaceship indicated a very advanced technology, and the tunnel seemed to mean that the people who had landed had dug into Mars. If they had managed to survive underground, and they must have been there a long time, why hadn't they emerged to repair the ship? If, that is, the ship had been wrecked?

There was no use worrying about such things. Tomorrow or the day after or a week or two from now would bring the answers.

Nevertheless, he was glad to get back to the lander. Though it wasn't the most comfortable or roomy of homes, it was still, in a sense, a piece of Earth. He had no trouble falling asleep, but, in the middle of the night, he woke with a start. He'd thought he'd heard something hard rapping against the double hull. He got up and. looked through the ports but could see nothing except darkness on all sides but one. Stars still moved slowly across the open roof of the canyon. The rover was a vague bulk which he would have thought a boulder if he hadn't known it was there.

Then, as he watched, a light sprang from it, a beam that moved down into the tunnel and then lifted and described a 380-degree arc. After two minutes, the light went out. Once an hour, as ordered by Danton, it became activated and swept the area with visible light, infrared, and radar. If anything moved for miles, it would sound an alarm in the lander and in the Aries.

His sleep the rest of the night was untroubled. The alarm, triggered by a radio wave from the Aries, awoke him with a, start. It was still dark outside, but the sky was paling above the top of the canyon. After the necessary reports, checking the equipment, and breakfast, he and Bronski climbed down on to the ground. On the way to the base of the cliff, he looked at the grey curve sticking out of the rubble. If they ran into a dead end in the tunnels, they would start removing the rocks from around the spaceship. Or, if they didn't find a port or some means of easy entrance, after so many days of labour, they would try to cut into it with a laser.

On Earth, removing the rocks, some of which were rather large, would have been impossible without a crane or much blasting powder. Here, two men should be able to lift any boulder he'd seen in the pile. But Shirazi and Danton might have to come down, too, to help.

As he went past the rover, he waved at it. Though it looked like a science fiction version of a Martian, it was familiar, and hence friendly. Another reminder of the home planet.

A moment later he looked back. The rover was following him as a dog follows its master. Danton, on duty now, had ordered it to accompany them. When he and Bronski descended into the tunnel through the hole they had made the day before, the rover extended a flexible arm at the end of which was a light and a camera. It would keep an eye on them so that the two in the Barsoom and the whole world could watch their progress - or lack of it.

Orme shook his head. It wasn't like him to be having such pessimistic thoughts. He was as optimistic as a person could be and still be sane. But there was in everyone a layer of darkness that no amount of psychological testing could reveal. It was too deep. It was unknown even to its possessor unless certain situations occurred to reveal it. This was one of them. But he wasn't going to let it overcome him. Once he got busy, he'd forget it.

Orme, in the lead, was almost within reach of the door, which should give entrance to another section of tunnel. If he had been a step closer, he would have been knocked down, perhaps badly crippled or killed, when it shot open.

It was as if a charge of TNT had gone off in the section beyond. He was lifted up and half-turned over by the explosion of air from the tunnel behind it. He glimpsed light there, had a vague impression of some kind of domed machine, and then he struck the ground.

Half-stunned, he lay helpless for a minute or perhaps more. He was not really aware of where he was or even who he was. Before his senses rallied, he was seized by people in spacesuits, the dark faceplates of their helmets masking their features. But they were human-sized and had two arms and two legs and five fingers. Two of them lifted him up and half-carried him towards the big wheeled machine. Danton's voice was yammering in his ear. 'What's going on, Richard? Richard? Are you there?’

As he began to come to, he thought, You can see me, can't you? but he did not reply for a minute. Then he mumbled, 'I'm okay. There's some things... no... people... like people...'

He was shoved into the open door of the machine and set firmly down in a chair. Something passed across his chest. A moment later, he knew that it was a metal band that confined his arms.

Bronski was dragged in, struggling, and he was placed in a chair in front of Orme. Past the rows of chairs were two chairs before a control board. The driver and another person had to sit there. The big curving screen in front gave a 150-degree view, allowing Orme to see what some of his captors were doing.

He said, 'Madeleine, they're placing six metal strips across the doorway. Now... they're putting six horizontal strips across the vertical. They seem to be glued on. Now... they're gluing on a screen to the strips.'

The rover's arm was still sticking down through the hole. But it was a figure seen in fog through the finely meshed screen.

'Now they're spraying something over the screen. What they're doing, they're putting up a kind of temporary door, I think, so they can pump air back into this section. Can you read me, Madeleine?'

There was no answer. The barrier was blocking off radio waves.

The workers returned to the rear of the machine where, he supposed, they stored their tools in a compartment. Then they climbed in and took seats, the door was shut, the machine turned around and headed towards the opposite door. It sat for perhaps ten minutes, and suddenly the door swung open. The machine rolled into another section just like the previous ones except that it had overhead lights.

Orme thought that Nadir and Madeleine must be going crazy by now. And on Earth, where the first photographs by the rover and the voice recordings would be coming in, people would be in a frenzy. He said, 'God, let these... people... be friendly. Let them also be Yours.'