They climbed a hill of sand and were among other hills where the footprints led them. They found an abandoned fireplace, charred sticks of wood, a small metal tin which had once, from its arrangement, contained oxygen to feed the fire. They looked new.
“She can’t be much farther on.” Smith was ready to drop, but still he ran. He slugged his feet into the sand and gasped.
I wonder what she’s like, thought Drew, moving in his thoughts, freely, wonderingly. I wonder if she’s tall and slender or small and very thin. I wonder what color eyes, what color hair she has? I wonder what her voice is like? Sweet, high? Or soft and very low?
I wonder a lot of things. So does Smith. Smith’s wondering, too, now. Listen to him wonder and gasp and run and wonder some more. This isn’t any good. It’ll lead us to something bad, I know. Why do we go on? A silly question. We go on, of course, because we’re only human, no more, no less.
I just hope, he thought, that she doesn’t have snakes for hair.
“A cave!”
They had come to the side of a small mountain, into which a cave went back through darkness. The footprints vanished within.
Smith snatched forth his electric torch and sent the beam inside, flashing it swiftly about, grinning with apprehension. He moved forward cautiously, his breath rasping in the earphones.
“It won’t be long now,” said Drew.
Smith didn’t look at him.
They walked together, elbows bumping. Every time Drew tried to draw ahead, Smith grunted and increased his pace; his face angry with color.
The tunnel twisted, but the footprints still appeared as they flicked the torch beam down.
Suddenly they came out into an immense cave. Across it, by a campfire which had gone out, a figure lay.
“There she is!” shouted Smith. “There she is!”
“Dibs,” whispered Drew quietly.
Smith turned, the gun was in his hand. “Get out,” he said.
“What?” Drew blinked at the gun.
“You heard what I said, get out!”
“Now, wait a minute—”
“Get back to the ship, wait for me there!”
“If you think you’re going to—”
“I’ll count to ten, if you haven’t moved by then, I’ll burn you where you stand—”
“You’re crazy!”
“One, two, three, better start moving.”
“Listen to me, Smith, for Heaven’s sake!”
“Four, five, six, I warned you—ah!”
The gun went off.
The bullet struck Drew in the hip, whirling him about to fall face down, crying out with pain. He lay in darkness.
“I didn’t mean it, Drew, I didn’t!” Smith cried. “It went off; my finger, my hand, nervous; I didn’t mean it!” A figure bent down in the blazing light, turned him over. “I’l fix you up, I’m sorry. I’ll get her to help us. Just a second!”
The pain in his side, Drew lay watching as the torch turned and Smith rushed loudly across the long cave toward the sleeping figure by the black fire. He heard Smith call out once or twice, saw him approach and bend down to the figure, touch it.
For a long time, Drew waited.
Smith turned the figure over.
From a distance, Drew heard Smith say, “She’s dead.”
“What!” called Drew. With fumbling hands he was taking out a small kit of medicine. He broke open a vial of white powder which he swallowed. The pain in his side stopped instantly. Now he went about bandaging the wound. It was bad enough, but not too bad. In the middle distance he saw Smith standing all alone, his torch senselessly in his numb hand, looking down at the woman’s figure.
Smith came back and sat down and looked at nothing.
“She’s—she’s been dead a long long time.”
“But the footprints? What about them?”
“This world, of course, this world. We didn’t stop to think. We just ran. I just ran. Like a fool. This world, I didn’t think until now. Now I know.”
“What is it?”
“There’s no wind, nothing. No seasons, no rain, no storms, no nothing. Ten thousand years ago, in a dying world, that woman there walked across the sands, alone. Maybe the last one alive.
With a few oxygen tins to keep her going. Something happened to the planet. The atmosphere drained off into space. No wind, no oxygen, no seasons. And her walking alone.” Smith shaped it in his mind before telling it quietly to Drew, not looking at him. “And she came to this cave and lay down and died.”
“Ten thousand years ago?”
“Ten thousand years. And she’s been here ever since. Perfect. Lying here, waiting for us to come and make fools of ourselves. A cosmic joke. Ah, yes! Very funny.”
“But the footprints?”
“No wind. No rain. The footprints look just as fresh as the day she made them, naturally. Everything looks new and fresh. Even her. Except there’s something about her. Just by seeing her you know she’s been dead a long long while. I don’t know what it is.”
His voice faded away.
Suddenly he remembered Drew. “My gun. You. Can I help?”
“I got it all dressed. It was an accident. Let’s put it that way.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“You won’t try and kill me for this?”
“Shut your mouth. Your finger slipped.”
“It did—it really did! I’m sorry.”
“I know it did. Shut up.” Drew finished packing the wound. “Give me a hand now, we’ve got to get back to the ship.” Smith helped him grunt to his feet and stand swaying. “Now walk me over so I can take a look at Miss Mars, ten thousand B.C. After all that running and this trouble I ought to get a look at her, anyway.”
Smith helped him slowly over to stand above the sprawling form. “Looks like she’s only sleeping,” said Smith. “But she’s dead, awful dead. Isn’t she pretty?”
She looks just like Anna, thought Drew, with a sense of shock. Anna sleeping there, ready to wake and smile and say hello.
“She looks just like Marguerite,” Smith said.
Drew’s mouth twitched. “Marguerite?” He hesitated. “Yes. Y-yes, I guess she does.” He shook his head. “All depends on how you look at it. I was just thinking myself—”
“What?”
“Never mind. Let her lie. Leave her there. Now, we’ve got to hurry. Back to the ship for us.”
“I wonder who she was?”
“We’ll never know. A princess maybe. A stenographer in some ancient city, a dancing maid? Come on, Smith.”
They made it back to the rocket in half an hour, slowly and painfully.
“Aren’t we fools, though? Really prime fools?”
The rocket door slammed.
The rocket fired up on fountains of red and blue flame.
Below, the sand was stirred and blasted and blown. The footprints, for the first time in ten thousands years were disturbed. They blew away in fine particles. When the fire wind died, the prints were gone.
The End
