«Here they come,» someone shouted.
The crowd took up the roar as the Earth team trotted out on the field, running in a long line, to swing into separate squads for the warming up period.
The roar rose and swelled, broke, ebbed lower and lower, until silence reigned over the stands.
A whistle shrilled. The officials walked out on the field. The two teams gathered. A coin flashed in the feeble sunlight. The Earth captain spoke to the referee and jerked his thumb at the north goal. The Earth team took the ball. The teams spread out.
Earth was on the defensive.
A toe smacked against the ball. The oval rose high into the air, spinning slowly. The Red Warriors thundered down the field. A Martian player cupped his arms, snared the ball.
The teams met in a swirl of action.
Players toppled, rolled on the ground. Like a streak of greased lightning, an Earth player cut in, flattened out in a low dive. His arms caught the ball carrier below the knees. The impact of the fall could be heard in the stands.
The teams lined up. The Martians thundered a bloodthirsty cry. The ball was snapped. Like a steel wall the Earth team rose up, smacked the Martian line flat. The backfield went around the ends like thundering rockets. The carrier was caught flat-footed. Mars lost three yards on the play.
The Terrestrial fans leaped to their feet and screamed.
The teams were ready again. The ball came back. It was an end play, a twister, a puzzler. But the Earth team worked like a well-oiled machine. The runner was forced out of bounds. Mars made two yards.
Third down and eleven to go. In two tries the Red Warriors advanced the oval but five yards. Sports-writers later devoted long columns to the peculiar psychology which prevented the Martians from kicking. Perhaps, as Hap Folsworth pointed out, they were overconfident, figured that even on fourth down they could advance the ball the necessary yardage. Perhaps, as another said, they were too stunned by the Earth defense.
The ball went to the Gold and Green.
The team shifted. The ball went back from center. Again there was a swirl of players—sudden confusion which crystallized into an ordered pattern as an Earth ball carrier swung around right end, protected by a line of interference that mowed down the charging Martians. When the Terrestrial was brought down the ball rested on the Mars’ twenty-yard line.
Signals. Shift. The ball was snapped. Weaving like a destroyer in heavy seas, a Green and Gold man, ball hugged to him, plowed into the center of the line. His team-mates opened the way for him, and even when he struck the secondary he still kept moving, plowing ahead with pistonlike motion of his driving legs until he was hauled down by superior strength.
The ball was only two yards from the final stripe. For the first time in many years the Red Warriors were backed against their own goal line.
The Druzec war cry thundered from the Martian stands, but the Earth fans sat dumbfounded.
No one could explain the next play. Maybe there was nothing to explain about it. Perhaps the Terrestrials simply charged in and by sheer force pushed the entire Martian line back for the necessary two yards. That was the way it looked.
An official raised his arms. The gigantic scoreboard clicked. Earth had scored!
The Earth stands went insane. Men and women jumped to their feet and howled their delight. The stadium shook to foot-stamping.
And throughout the entire game the Earth side of the stadium was a mad pandemonium as score after score was piled up while the Terrestrial eleven systematically ripped the Martian team apart for yard after consistent yard of ground.
The final count was 65-0 and the Earth fans, weak with triumph, came back to the realization that for four long quarters they had lived in a catapulting, rocketing, unreal world of delirious joy. For four long quarters they had made of the stadium a bedlam, a crazy, weaving, babbling, brass-tongued bedlam.
In the Martian stands sounded the long wail of lament, the death dirge of the ancient Druzecs, a lament that had not been intoned over an Earth-Mars football game for more than three-score years.
That night the Terrestrials took Guja Tant apart, such as is the right and custom of every victorious football delegation. And while the Martians may accept defeat in a philosophical manner, those who participated in the kidnapping will tell one they objected forcefully when the mascot zimpa—which had paraded in honor of many a Martian victory—was taken from his stable and placed on board the Earth liner chartered for the football run.
Hap Folsworth, who had covered the game for the Evening Rocket, explained it to Sims of the Star and Bradley of the Express.
«It’s just a lot of star-dust,» he said. «Some of Snelling’s psychology. He got a bunch of big boys and he kept them under cover, taught them a lot of new tricks and built them up as a mystery team. Them Red Warriors were scared to death before they ever faced our fellows. Psychology won that game, you mark my word—»
Sims of the Star interrupted. «Did you get a good look at any of the boys on our team?» he asked.
«Why, no, I didn’t,» admitted Hap. «Of course, I saw them out there on the field from where I was in the press section, but I didn’t meet any of them face to face. The coach barred us from the dressing rooms, even after the game. That’s a hell of a ways to go to win a ball game, but if he can win them that way I’m all for him.»
He puffed on a Venus-weed cigar. «But you mark my word. It was the old psychology that turned the trick.» He stopped and looked at his two fellow sports-writers.
«Say,» exploded Hap. «I don’t think you fellows believe what I am saying.»
They didn’t speak, but Hap looked at their faces again and was certain they didn’t believe him.
Arthur Hart, editor of the Evening Rocket, looked up as the door opened.
Framed in the doorway was Jimmy Russell. Just behind him stood a copper-colored man, naked except for a loin-cloth.
The editor stared.
Men in the city room whirled around from their desks and wondered what it was all about.
«I have returned,» said Jimmy and the editor emitted a strangled yelp that knifed through the silence in the room.
The reporter walked into the room, dragging his companion after him.
«Tone down your voice,» he said, «or you’ll frighten my friend. He has seen enough in the last hour to unnerve him for a lifetime.»
«Who the hell you got there?» roared Hart.
«This gentleman,» said Jimmy, «is Chief Hiawatha. I can’t pronounce his name, so I call him Hiawatha. He lived somewhere around here three, four thousand years ago.»
«This isn’t a masquerade,» snapped the editor. «This is a newspaper office.»
«Sure and I work here and I’m bringing you a story that will knock your hat off.»
«You don’t mean to tell me you’re bringing in the story I sent you out to get two weeks ago?» Hart purred, and his purr had an edge on it. «You don’t mean to tell me you’re back already with that story.»
«The very same story,» agreed Jimmy.
«Too bad,» said the editor, «but the game’s over. It was over two hours ago. Earth won by a big score. I suppose you were too drunk to find that out.»
«Nothing to drink where I come from,» Jimmy told him.
«How you must have hated it,» said Hart.
«Now listen,» said Jimmy, «do you want to get the inside story on this Earth team or don’t you? I got it. And it’s a big story. No wonder Earth won. Do you know that those Earth players were picked from the best football players Earth has produced during the last 1800 years? Why, Mars didn’t have a chance!»