Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Dark Intruder & Other Stories

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Marion Zimmer Bradley

ACE BOOKS, INC.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10036

THE DARK INTRUDER AND OTHER STORIES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

The Dark Intruder

Jackie Sees a Star

Exiles of Tomorrow

Death Between the Stars

The Crime Therapist

The Stars Are Waiting

Black & White

INTRODUCTION

A writer's life—glamorous tales to the contrary—consists mostly of long sessions at a typewriter, alternating with

long sessions of staring at the blank paper in the typewriter. But there are landmarks where the grind does seem to

have a few sparks of glamour about it, after all. The first check from an editor. The first novel to appear on the stands.

For me, this collection marks a giant step—the first assembling, under one cover, of my short stories.

The contents of this book range, in time, from 1952 to 1962. (I only hope it won't be too painfully evident which is

which.) Ten years is a sizable hunk of a lifetime, and in a science-fiction writer's lifetime, those were about the most

eventful ten years I could have chosen to write in. When that period of time began, people were just getting used to

the idea that television belonged in the living room, instead of in Buck Rogers' space ship, under the 'name of a

"televisor." A bare ten years later, the space ship itself is history, rather than fiction.

Which begs the question; if life today is so full of event and history, why escape into the future by means of the

science-fiction story? In fixing his eyes on the distant stars, does the science-fiction writer lose his perspective on the

exciting present?

I don't think so. Every step into the unknown future opens up a thousand new unknown futures—and only by the

free play of the imagination can we guess, perhaps, where our dreams may be leading us.

-M. Z. B.

THE DARK INTRUDER

Andrew slayton snapped the dusty leather notebook shut, and tossed it into his blanket roll. He stood up, ducking to

avoid the ridgepole of the tent—Andrew, who had grown up on low-gravity Mars, was just over seven feet tall—and stood up, his

head a little bent, looking at the other men who shared this miniature outpost against the greatest desert ever known to man.

The flaps of the tent were tightly pegged against the fierce and unpredictable sandstorms of the Martian night. In the glow of a

portable electric lamp, the four roughnecks who would do the actual digging squatted around an up-ended packing box, intent on

tonight's installment of their perpetual poker game.

A dark oblong in the corner of the tent rose and fell with regular snores. John Reade, temporary leader of this expedition, was

not young, and the day's work had been exhausting.

The men glanced up from their cards as Slayton approached them. "Want to sit in, kid?" Mike Fairbanks asked, "Kater's losing

his shirt. We could use a new dealer."

"No, thanks. Not tonight."

Fat Kater shook with laughter, and jeered "The kid'ud rather read about Kingslander's men, and how they all went nuts and shot

each other up!"

Spade Hansen flung down his cards, with a gesture of annoyance. "That's nothing to joke about, Kater." He lowered his gruff

voice. "Find anything in the logs, Andy?"

Andrew squatted, elbows on thighs, beside the big foreman. "Nothing but what we know already, Spade. It beats me. As near as

I can figure out, Jack Norton's expedition—he only had ten men—was washed up inside a week. Their rations are still cached over

there. And, according to Kings-lander's notebook, his outfit went the same way. They reached here safely, made camp, did a little

exploring—they found the bodies of Norton's men and buried them—then, one by one, they all went insane and shot each other.

Twenty men—and within ten days, they were just twenty-corpses."

"Pleasant prospect," Kater glowered, slapping down his cards on the improvised table and scowling as Rick Webber raked in the

pot. "What about us?"

Rick Webber meticulously stacked his winnings and scaled his cards at Hensen. "Quit your worrying. Third time lucky—

maybe we'll get through, all right."

"And maybe we won't," Fairbanks grunted, raking the cards together and shuffling them with huge fists, "You know what they

call this outfit back in Mount Denver? Reade's Folly."

"I'd hate to tell you what they called the first men who actually tried living on Mars," said a sleepy, pleasant voice from the

corner, and John Reade thrust up his shock of white hair. "But •we're here." The old man turned to Andrew. "Wasn't there even a

clue in the logs, some notion of what might have happened to them?"

Andrew swivelled to face him. "Not a word, sir. Kings-lander kept the log himself until he was shot, then one of his men—Ford

Benton—kept it. The last couple of pages are the most awful gibberish—not even in English. Look for yourself—he was

obviously but of his head for days." Andrew unfolded his long legs, hauled up a corner of the tent flap, and stood, staring

morosely across the dark wasteland of rocks and bare bushes, toward the looming mass of Xanadu.

Xanadu. Not the Xanadu of Coleridge's poem, but—to the half-forgotten space drifter who discovered the place thirty years

ago—a reasonable facsimile. It was a cloistered nun of a city, hidden behind a wide skirt of the most impassable mountains on

Mars. And the city was more impassable than the mountains. No human being had ever entered it—yet.

They'd tried. Two expeditions, twelve years apart, had vanished without trace, without explanation other than the dusty

notebook Andrew had unearthed, today, from the rotted shreds of a skeleton's clothing.

Archaeological expeditions., on Mars, all start the same way. You argue, wheedle, beg, borrow and steal until you have the

necessary authority and a little less than the necessary funds. Earth, torn with internecine wars and slammed down under currency

restrictions, does not send much money to Mars at any time. All but the barest lifeline of supplies was choked off when it was

finally verified that Mars had no heavy metals, very little worth mining. The chronically-bankrupt Geographical Society had

abandoned Mars even before Xanadu was discovered. The thronging ruins of Venus, the strange surviving culture of subterranean

men on Titan, the odd temples of the inner moons of Jupiter, are more rewarding than the desert barrens of Mars and its

inaccessible Xanadu—the solitary remnant of a Martian society which must have vanished before mankind, on Earth, had

discovered fire.

For all practical purposes, Mars is a military frontier, patrolled by the U.N. to keep any one country from using it as a base for

developing secret weapons. It's also a good place to test new atomic engines, since there isn't much of a fallout problem and no

worry about a large population getting fallout jitters. John Reade, retired Major in the Space Service, had good military contacts,

and had managed to get a clearance for the third—only the third—attempt to conquer Xanadu.

Private expeditions on Mars are simple to the point of being primitive. No private citizen or foundation could possibly pay

freight charges for machinery to Mars. Private citizens travel on foot, taking with them only what they can carry on their backs.

Besides, no one could take a car, a plane or a rocketship over the mountains and still find a safe place to land. Pack animals are out

of the question; horses and burros cannot adapt to the thin air—thicker than pre-space theorists had dared to hope, but still pretty

thin—and dogs and chimpanzees, which can, aren't- much good for pack-work. The Geographic Society is still debating about

importing yaks and llamas from high-altitude Peru and Tibet; meanwhile, it's a good thing that gravity on Mars is low enough to

permit tremendous packloads of necessities.

The prime necessity is good lungs and a sackful of guts, while you scramble, scratch and curse your way over the mountains.

Then a long, open valley, treacherously lined with needles of rock, and Xanadu lying—the bait in the mouth of the trap—at the

top.

And then—what?

Kater and Hansen and the rest were grumbling over the cards again. "This place is jinxed," Mike complained, turning up a deuce.

"We'll be lucky if we get a cent out of it Now if we were working on Venus—but Mars, nyaahl Even if we find something, which I

doubt, and live to tell about it—who cares?"

"Yeah," Spade muttered. "Reade, how much did you spend for dynamite to blast the walls?"

"You didn't pay for it," Reade said cheerfully.

Andrew stooped, shrugging on his leather jacket; thumbed the inside heating-units. "I'm going for a walk."

"Alone?" Reade asked sharply.

"Sure, unless someone wants to come along," Andrew said, then suddenly understood. He pulled his pistol from his pocket, and

handed it, butt-first, to Reade. "Sorry, I should have remembered. This is about where the shooting started, with the others."

Reade laughed, but he didn't return the gun.

"Don't go too far."

It was one of the rare, clear nights which sometimes did penance for the usual sandstorms. Andrew drew down the tent flap

behind him, walked away into the darkness. At his foot he felt a little scurrying, stooped and caught up one of the blunt-nosed

sand-mice. It squirmed on his palm, kicking hard with all six puny legs; then felt the comforting heat of his hand and yeep-yeeped

with pleasure; he walked on, idly scratching the scaly little beast.

The two small moons were high overhead, and there was a purplish, shimmery light over the valley, with its grotesque floor of

rock spires, fuzzed between with blackish patches of prickle-bushes—spinosa martts—matted in a close tangle between each little

peak.

Downwind he heard the long screaming of a banshee;

then he saw it, running blindly, a huge bird with its head down between trailing, functionless wings. Andrew held his breath and

stood still. The banshees had no intelligence to speak of, but by some peculiar tropism, they would rush toward anything that

moved; the very heat of his body might attract them, and their huge clawed feet could disembowel a man at one stroke. And he had

no pistol!

This one failed to sense him; it ran, trailing its wings and screaming eerily, like a cloaked girl, blindly into the dusk. Andrew let

out his breath violently in relief. Suddenly he realized that he was not sure just which way the tent lay. He turned, crowding against

"one of the rockspires. A little hollow gleamed pallidly in the moonlight. He remembered climbing a rise; he must have come this

way-

He slid down roughly, a trailing pricker raking his hand. The sand-mouse leaped from his palm with a squeal and scuffled away.

Andrew, sucking his bleeding palm, looked up and saw the walls of Xanadu lifting serried edges just over his head. How could he

possibly have come so near in just a few minutes? Everything looked different-

He spun around, trying to scramble up the way he had come. He fell. His head struck rock, and the universe went dark.

"Take it easy." John Reade's voice sounded disembodied over his head, "Just lie still. You've got a bad bump, Andy."

He opened his eyes to the glare of stars and a bitter wind on his face. Reade caught at his hand ~as he moved it exploringly

toward his face. "Let it alone, the bleeding's stopped. What happened? The banshee get you?"

"No, I fell. I lost my way, and I must have hit my head." Andrew let his eyes fall shut again. "I'm sorry, sir; I know you told us

not to go near the city alone. But I didn't realize I'd come so close."

Reade frowned and leaned closer. "Lost your way? What are you talking about? I followed you—brought your pistol. I was

afraid you'd meet a banshee. You hadn't gone two hundred yards from the tent, Andy. When I caught up with you, you were

stumbling around, and then you rolled down on the ground into that little hollow. You kept muttering No, no, no—I thought the

banshee had got you."

Andrew pushed himself upright. "I don't think so, sir. I looked up and saw the city right over my head. That's what made me

fall. That's when it started."

"When what started?"

"I—don't know." Andrew put up his hand to rub his forehead, wincing as he touched the bruise. Suddenly he asked "John, did

you ever wonder what the old Martians—the ones who built Xanadu—called the place?"

"Who hasn't?" The old man nodded, impatiently. "I guess we'll never know, though. That's a fool question to ask me right now!"

"It's something I felt," Andrew said, groping for words. "When I got up, after I stumbled, everything looked different. It was

like seeing double; one part was just rocks, and bushes, and ruins, and the other part was—well, it wasn't like anything I'd ever

seen before. I felt—" he hesitated, searching for words to define something strange, then said with an air of surprise, "Homesick.

Yes, that's it. And the most awful—desolation. The way I'd feel, I guess, if I went back to Mount Denver and found it burned

down flat. And then for just a second I knew what the city was called, and why it was dead, and why we couldn't get into it, and

why tie other men went crazy. And it scared me, and I started to run—and that's when I slipped, and hit my head."

Reade's worried face relaxed in a grin.

"Rubbish! The bump on your head mixed up your timesense a little, that's all. Your hallucination, or whatever it was, came after

the bump, not before."

"No," Andrew said quietly, but with absolute conviction. "I wasn't hurt that bad, John."

Reade's face changed; held concern again, "All right," he said gently, "Tell me what you think you know."

Andrew dropped his face in his hands. "Whatever it was, it's gone! The bump knocked it right out of my head. I remember that

I knew—" he raised a drawn face, "but I can't remember what!"

Reade put his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "Let's get back to the tent, Andy, I'm freezing out here. Look, son, the

whole thing is just your mind working overtime from that bump you got. Or—"

Andrew said bitterly, "You think I'm going crazy."

"I didn't say that, son. Come on. We can talk it over in the morning." He hoisted Andrew to his feet. "I told Spade that if we

weren't back in half an hour, he'd better come looking for us."

The men looked up from their cards, staring at the blood on Andrew's face, but the set of Reade's mouth silenced any

comments. Andrew didn't want to talk. He quickly shucked jacket and trousers, crawled into his sleeping bag, thumbed the

heat-unit and immediately fell asleep.

When he woke, the tent was empty. Wondering why he had been allowed to sleep—Spade usually meted out rough treatment to

blanket-huggers—Andrew dressed quickly, gulped a mug of the bitter coffee that stood on the hot-box, and went out to look for

the others.

He had to walk some distance to find them. Armed with shovels, the four roughnecks were digging up the thorny prickle-bushes

near the hollow where Andrew had fallen, while Reade, in the lee of a rock, was scowling over the fine print of an Army manual of

Martio-biology.

"Sorry I overslept, John. Where do I go to work?"

"You don't. I've got another job for you." Reade turned to bark a command at Fairbanks. "Careful with the damned plant! I told

you to wear gloves! Now get them on, and don't touch those things with your bare hands." He glanced back at Andrew. "I had an

idea overnight," he said. "What do we really know about spinosa martis? And this doesn't quite look like the species that grows

around Mount Denver. I think maybe this variety gives off some kind of gas—or poison." He pointed at the long scratch on

Andrew's hand. "Your trouble started after you grabbed one of them. You know, there's locoweed on Earth that drives cattle

crazy-mushrooms and other plants that secrete hallucinogens. If these things give off some sort of volatile mist, it could have

dispersed in that little hollow down there—there wasn't much wind last night."

"What shall I do?" he asked.

"I'd rather not discuss that here. Come on, 111 walk back to the tent with you." He scrambled stiffly to his feet. "I want you to

go back to Mount Denver, Andy."

Andrew stopped; turned to Reade accusingly.

"You do think I've gone crazy!"

Reade shook his head. "I just think you'll be better off in Mount Denver. -I've got a job for you there—one man would have to

go, anyhow, and you've had one—well, call it a hallucination—already. If it's a poison, the stuff might be cumulative. We may just

wind up having to wear gas masks." He put a hand on the thick leather of Andrew's jacket sleeve. "I know how you feel about this

place, Andy. But personal feelings aren't important in this kind of work."

"John—" half hesitant, Andrew looked back at him, "I had an idea overnight, too."

"Let's hear it."

"It sounds crazy, I guess," Andrew said diffidently, "but it just came to me. Suppose the old Martians were beings without

bodies—discarnate intelligences? And they're trying to make contact with us? Men aren't used to that kind of contact, and it

drives them insane."

Reade scowled. "Ingenious," he admitted,, "as a theory, but there's a hole in it. If they're discarnate, how did they build—" he

jerked his thumb at the squat, fortress-like mass of Xanadu behind them.

"I don't know, sir. I don't know how the drive units of a spaceship work, either. But I'm here." He looked up. "I think one of

them was trying to get in touch with me, last night. And maybe if I was trying, too—maybe if I understood, and tried to open my

mind to it, too—"

Reade looked disturbed. "Andy, do you realize what you're suggesting? Suppose this is all your imagination—"

"It isn't, John."

"Wait, now. Just suppose, for a minute; try to see it my way."

"Well?" Andrew was impatient.

"By trying to 'open your mind', as you put it, you'd just be surrendering your sane consciousness to a brooding insanity. The

human mind is pretty complex, son. About nine-tenths of your brain is dark, shadowy, all animal instinct. Only the conscious

fraction can evaluate—use logic. The balance between the two is pretty tricky at best. I wouldn't fool around with it, if I were you.

Listen, Andy, I know you were born on Mars, I know how you feel. You feel at home here, don't you?"

"Yes, but that doesn't mean—"

"You resent men like Spade and Kater, coming here for the money that's in it, don't you?"

"Not really. Well, yes, but-"

"There was a Mars-born kid with Kingslander, Andy. Remember the log? He was the first to go. In a place like this, imagination

is worse than smallpox. You're the focal point where trouble would start, if it started. That's why I picked

men like Spade and Kater—insensitive, unimaginative—for the first groundwork here. I've had my eye on you from the beginning,

Andy, and you reacted just about the way I expected. I'm sorry, but you'll have to go."

Andrew clenched his fists in his pocket, speaking dry-mouthed. "But if I was right—wouldn't it be easier for them to contact

someone like me? Won't you try to see it my way?" He made a final, hopeless appeal. "Won't you let me stay? I know I'm safe

here—I know they won't hurt me, whatever happens to the others. Take my gun if you want to—keep me in handcuffs,

even—but don't send me back!"

Reade's voice •was flat and final. "If I had any doubts, I wouldn't have them after that. Every word you say is just making it

worse. Leave while you still can, Andy."

Andrew gave up. "All right. I'll start back now, if you insist."

"I do." Reade turned away and hurried back toward the crew, and Andrew went into the tent and started packing rations in his

blanket-roll for the march. The pack was clumsy, but not a tenth as heavy as the load he'd packed on the way up here. He jerked

the straps angrily tight, hoisted the roll to his shoulder, and went out.

Reade was waiting for him. He had Andrew's pistol.

"You'll need this." He gave it to him; hauled out his notebook and stabbed a finger at the sketchy map he had drawn on their

way over the mountains. "You've got your compass? Okay, look; this is the place where our route crossed the mailcar track from

Mount Denver to the South Encampment. If you camp there for a few hours, you can hitch a ride on the mail-car—there's one

every other day—into Mount Denver. When you get there, look up Montray. He's getting the expedition together back there."

Reade tore the leaf from his notebook, scribbling the address on the back. Andrew lifted an eyebrow; he knew Reade had planned

the expedition

in two sections, to prevent the possibility that they, trap would vanish without even a search-party sent after them.

"He won't have things ready, of course, but tell him to hurry it up, and give him all the help you can. Tell him what

we're up against."

"You mean what you're up against. Are you sure you can trust me to run your errands in Mount Denver?"

"Don't be so grim about it," Reade said gently. "I know you want to stay, but I'm only doing my duty the way I see

it. I have to think of everybody, not just you—or myself." He gripped Andrew's shoulder. "If things turn out all right,

you can come back when they're all under control. Good luck, Andy."

"And if they don't?" Andrew asked, but Reade had turned away.

It had been a rough day. Andrew sat with his back against a boulder, watching the sun drop swiftly toward the

reddish range of rock he had climbed that afternoon. Around him the night wind was beginning to build up, but he had

found a sheltered spot between two boulders; and in his heated sleeping-bag, could spend a comfortable night even at

sixty-below temperatures.

He thought ahead while he chewed the tasteless Mar-beef—Reade had outfitted the expedition with Space Service

surplus—and swallowed hot coffee made from ice painstakingly scraped from the rocks. It had taken Reade, and five

men, four days to cross the ridge. Travelling light, Andrew hoped to do it in three. The distance was less than thirty

miles by air, but the only practicable trail wound in and out over ninety miles, mostly perpendicular. If a bad sandstorm

built up, he might not make it at all, but anyone who spent more than one season on Mars took that kind of risk for

granted.

The sun dropped, and all at once the sky was ablaze with stars. Andrew swallowed the last of his coffee, looking up to

pick out the Heavenly Twins on the horizon—the topaz glimmer of Venus, the blue star-sapphire that was Earth. Andrew had

lived on Earth for a few years in his teens, and hated it; the thick moist air, the dragging feel of too much gravity. The close-packed

cities nauseated him with their smell of smoke and grease and human sweat. Mars air was thin and cold and scentless. His parents

had hated Mars the same way he had hated Earth—they were biologists in the Xenozoology division, long since transferred to

Venus. He had never felt quite at home anywhere, except for the few days he had spent at Xanadu. Now he was being kicked out of

that too.

Suddenly, he swore. The hell with it, sitting here, feeling sorry for himself! He'd have a long day tomorrow, and a rough climb.

As he unrolled his sleeping-bag, waiting for the blankets to warm, he wondered; how old was Xanadu?

Did it matter? Surely, if men could throw a bridge between the planets, they could build a bridge across the greater gap of time

that separated them from these who had once lived on Mars. And if any man could do that, Andy admitted ungrudgingly, that man

was John Reade. He pulled off his boots, anchored them carefully with his pack, weighted the whole thing down with rock, and

crawled into the sack.

In the comforting warmth, relaxing, a new thought crossed his mind.

Whatever it was that had happened to him at Xanadu, he wasn't quite sure. The bump had confused him. But certainly

something had happened. He did not seriously consider Reade's warning. He knew, as Reade could not be expected to know, that

he had not suffered from a hallucination; had not been touched by the fringes of insanity. But he had certainly undergone a very

strange experience. Whether it had been subjective or objective, lie did not know; but he intended to find out.

How? He tried to remember a little desultory reading he had once done about telepathy. Although he had spoken

glibly to Reade about 'opening his mind,' he really had not the faintest idea of what he had meant by the phrase. He

grinned in the dark.

"Well, whoever and whatever you are," he said aloud, "I'm all ready and waiting. If you can figure out a way to

communicate with me, come right ahead."

And the alien came.

"I am Kamellin," it said.

I am Kamellin..

That was all Andrew could think. It was all his tortured brain could encompass. His head hurt, and the dragging

sense of some actual, tangible force seemed to pull and twist at him. I AM KAMELLIN . . . KAMELLIN . . .

KAMELLIN . . . it was like a tide that sucked at him, crowding out his own thoughts, dragging him under and

drowning him. Andrew panicked; he fought it, thrashing in sudden frenzy, feeling arms and legs hit the sides of the

sleeping-bag, the blankets twisted around him like an enemy's grappling hands.

Then the surge relaxed and he lay still, his breath loud in the darkness, and with fumbling fingers untangling the

blankets. The sweat of fear was cold on his face, but the panic was gone.

For the force had not been hostile. It had only been— eager. Pathetically eager; eager as a friendly puppy is eager,

as a friendly dog may jump up and knock a man down.

"Kamellin," Andrew said the alien word aloud, thinking that the name was not particularly outlandish. He hoped the

words would focus his thoughts sufficiently for the alien to understand.

"Kamellin, come ahead, okay, but this time take it easy, take it slow and easy. Understand?" Guardedly, he relaxed, hoping

he would be able to take it if some unusual force were thrust at him; He could understand now why men had gone insane. If

this—Kamellin—had hit him like that the first time-Even now, when he understood and partly expected what was happening, it

was an overwhelming flood, flowing through his mind like water running into a bottle. He lay helpless, sweating. The stars were

gone, blanked out, and the howling wind was quiet—or was it that he no longer saw or heard? He hung alone in a universe of

emptiness, and then, to his disembodied consciousness, came the beginning of— what? Not speech. Not even a mental picture. It

was simply contact, and quite indescribable. And it said, approximately;

Greetings. At last. At last it has happened and we are both sane. I am Kamellin.

The wind was howling again, the stars a million flame-bright flares in the sky. Huddled in his blankets, Andrew felt the dark

intruder in his brain ebb and flow with faint pressure as, their thoughts raced in swift question and answer. He whispered his own

question aloud; otherwise Kamellin's thoughts flowed into his and intermingled with them until he found himself speaking

Kamellin's thoughts.

"What are you? Was I right, then? Are you Martians discarnate intelligences?"

Not discarnate, we have always had bodies, or rather— we lived in bodies. But our minds and bodies were wholly

separate. Nothing but our will tied them together. When one body died, we simply passed into another newborn

body.

A spasm of claustrophobic terror grabbed at Andrew, and his flesh crawled. "You wanted—"

Kamellin's reassurance was immediate;

I do not want your body. You have, Kamellin fumbled for

a concept to express what he meant, you are a mature individual with a personality, a reasoning intelligence of your own. I would

have to destroy that before your body could join with me in symbiosis. His thoughts flared indignation; That would not be

honorable!

"I hope all your people are as honorable as you are, then. What happened to the other expedition?"

He felt black anger, sorrow and desolation, breaking like tidal waves in his brain. My people were maddened—I could not hold

them back. They were not stable, what you would call, not sane. The time interval had been too long. There was much killing and

death which I could not prevent.

"If I could only find some way to tell Reade—"

It would be of no use. A time ago, I tried that. I attempted to make contact, easily, with a young mind that was particularly

receptive to my thought. He did not go insane, and we, together, tried to tell Captain Kingslander what had happened to the others.

But he believed it was more insanity, and when the young man was killed by one of the others, I had to dissipate again. I tried to

reach Captain Kingslander himself, but the thought drove him insane—he was already near madness with his own fear.

Andrew shuddered. "God!" he whispered. "What can we do?"

1 do not know. I will leave you, if you wish it. Our race is finally dying. In a few mare years we will be gone, and our planet will

be safe for you.

"Kamellin, no!" Andrew's protest was immediate and genuine. "Maybe, together, we can think of some way to convince them."

The alien seemed hesitant now;

Would you be willing, then, to—share your body for a time? It will not be easy, it is never easy for two personalities to co-inhabit

one body. I could not do it without your complete consent. Kamellin seemed to be thinking thoughts which were so alien that

Andrew could grasp them only vaguely; only the concept of a meticulous honor remained to color his belief in Kamellin.

"What happened to your original host-race?"

He lay shivering beneath his heated blankets as the story unfolded in his mind. Kamellin's race, he gathered, had been

humanoid—as that concept expressed itself, he sensed Kamellin's amusement; Rather, your race is martianoid! Yes, they had built

the city the Earthmen called Xanadu, it was their one technological accomplishment which had been built to withstand time. Built in

the hope that one day we might return and reclaim it from the sand again, Kamellin's soundless voice whispered, The last refuge of

our dying race.

"What did you call the city?"

Kamellin tried to express the phonetic equivalent and a curious sound formed on Andrew's lips. He said it aloud, exploringly;

"Shein-la Mahari." His tongue lingered on the liquid syllables. "What does it mean?"

The city of Mahari—Mahari, the little moon. Andrew found his eyes resting on the satellite Earthmen called Deimos. "Shein-la

Mahari," he repeated. He would never call it Xanadu again.

Kamellin continued his story.

The host-race, Andrew gathered, had been long-lived and hardy, though by no means immortal. The minds and bodies—"minds,"

he impressed on Andrew, was not exactly the right concept—were actually two separate, wholly individual components. When a

body died, the "mind" simply transferred, without any appreciable interval, into a newborn host; memory, although slightly

impaired and blurred by such a transition, was largely retained. So that the consciousness of any one individual might extend,

though dimly, over an almost incredible period of time.

The dual civilization had been a simple, highly mentalized one, systems of ethics and philosophy superseding one another in

place of the rise and fall of governments. The physical life of the hosts was not highly technological. Xanadu had been almost their

only such accomplishment, last desperate expedient of a dying race against the growing inhospitality of a planet gripped in

recurrent, ever-worsening ice ages. They might have survived the ice alone, but a virus struck and decimated the hosts, eliminating

most of the food animals as well. The birth-rate sank almost to nothing; many of the freed minds dissipated for lack of a host-body

in which to incarnate.

Kamellin had a hard time explaining the next step. His kind could inhabit the body of anything which "had life, animal or plant.

But they were subject to the physical limitations of the hosts. The only animals which 'survived disease and ice were the sand-mice

and the moronic banshees; both so poorly organized, with nervous systems so faulty, that even when vitalized by the intelligence

of Kamellin's race, they were incapable of any development. It was similar, Kamellin explained, to a genius who is imprisoned in

the body of a helpless paralytic; his mind undamaged, but his body wholly unable to respond.

A few of Kamellin's people tried it anyhow, in desperation. But after a few generations of the animal hosts, they had

degenerated terribly, and were in a state of complete nonsanity, unable even to leave the life-form to which they had bound

themselves. For all Kamellin knew, some of his people still inhabited the banshees, making transition after transition by the faint,

dim flicker of an instinct still alive, but hopelessly buried in generations of non-rational life.

The few sane survivors had decided, in the end, to enter the prickle-bushes; spinosa mortis. This was possible, although it, too,

had drawbacks; the sacrifice of consciousness was the main factor in life as a plant. In the darkness of the Martian night, Andrew

shuddered at Kamellin's whisper;

Immortality—without hope. An endless, dreamless sleep. We live, somnolent, in the darkness, and the wind, and

wait—and forget. We had hoped that some day a new race might evolve on this world. But evolution here reached a

dead end with the banshees and sand-mice. They are perfectly adapted to their environment and they have no

struggle to survive: hence they need not evolve and change. When the Earthmen came, we had hope. Not that we

might take their bodies. Only that we might seek help from them. But we were too eager, and my people drove out—

killed-

The flow of thoughts ebbed away into silence.

Andrew spoke at last, gently.

"Stay with me for a while, at least. Maybe we can find a way."

It won't be easy, Kamellin warned.

"We'll try it, anyhow. How long ago—how long have you, well, been a plant?"

I do not know. Many, many generations—there is no consciousness of time. Many seasons. There is much

blurring, Let me look at the stars with your eyes.

"Sure," Andrew consented.

The sudden blackness took him by surprise, sent a spasm of shock and terror through his mind; then sight came back and he

found himself sitting upright, staring wide-eyed at the stars, and heard Kamellin's agonized thoughts;

It has been long—again the desperate, disturbing fumbling for some concept. It has been nine hundred thousand

of your years!

Then silence; such abysmal grieved silence that Andrew was almost shamed before the naked grief of this man—he could not

think of Kamellin except as a man—mourning for a

dead world. He lay down, quietly, not wanting to intrude on the sorrow of his curious companion.

Physical exhaustion suddenly overcame him, and he fell asleep.

"Was Mars like this in your day, Kamellin?" Andrew tossed the question cynically into the silence in his brain. Around him a

freezing wind shifted and tossed at the crags, assailing the grip of his gauntleted hands on rock. He didn't expect any answer. The

dark intruder had been dormant all day; Andrew, when he woke, had almost dismissed the whole thing as a bizarre fantasy, born of

thin air and impending madness.

But now the strange presence, like a whisper in the dark, was with him again.

Our planet was never hospitable. But why have you never discovered the roadway through the mountains?

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MarionZimmerBradleyACEBOOKS,INC.1120AvenueoftheAmericasNewYork,N.Y.10036THEDARKINTRUDERANDOTHERSTORIESCopyright©,1964,byAceBooks,Inc.AllRightsReservedCoverartandillustrationsbyJackGaughanTABLEOFCONTENTSIntroductionTheDarkIntruderJackieSeesaStarExilesofTomorrowDeathBetweentheStarsTheCrimeTherapistThe...

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