Finally they reached the family vault. The mechanism of the door had been damaged by the bombardment, but it responded to Ben’s handprint and the door opened with a groan. Inside, on a steel table, they found a sealed pouch, and a hand-scribbled note on a piece of gray paper.
Ben picked up the note, recognized his father’s hasty scrawl. “These are yours,” the note said, “to guard with your life and pass on to your children. The belt is your authority and identification, to be worn until its contents are demanded. The tape is also to be passed on, although its words mean nothing now.
One day you may understand it. These things are yours; guard them well, and good luck, my son.” Inside the pouch were a belt and a spool of tape. The belt was black, a strip of elastic mesh with a capsule enclosed in the fabric. The capsule was the size of an egg, smooth and silvery as Ben removed it from its pocket in the belt. It felt metallic in his hand, and yet it was strangely warm to the touch. He replaced it in the belt and ran the belt around his waist. The elastic seemed to clasp him as though it welcomed a carrier.
“What is it?” Tom Barron said.
“I don’t know,” Ben replied. “My father wore it as long as I can remember. I always thought it was a gift from my mother, but now that I think of it I’m sure Dad told me once that it was handed down by my grandfather.” Ben paused, trying to draw forth a memory that had been buried completely for years.
“Once when I was very small Dad showed me these things—the belt, and the tape too. He told me that the men of the House of Trefon were some kind of guardians, ‘Keepers of the keys’ was the way he put it, but he never told me what we were guarding.”
Tom pointed to the spool on the table. “What about the tape?”
“That’s part of it, too.” Ben crossed the room and slid a tape player out from the wall. The tape was an ancient one, wrinkled and frayed as though played many times. It was an old style tape spool with open edges, but it fit into the player. Ben threaded it, turned the switch, and waited as the tape slowly began to unwind.
At first there was just a crackle of static. Then, suddenly, they heard a voice, a woman’s voice, singing.
It was a mauki chant. It was the first time Tom Barron had ever heard a mauki sing; for a moment he dismissed it as foolishness at a time like this, just a tape recording of somebody singing a song. But then he stopped, and turned, and listened, suddenly shivering in the half-lighted room.
For Ben Trefon the voice brought back a flood of childhood memories, and a wave of loneliness that was almost unbearable. For as long as he could remember Spacer women had always sung; it was one of the things that made them maukis. Of course there were many kinds of mauki songs, but most familiar were the laments, the haunting songs of grief and loss, half ballad and half chant, that never really told a story yet always conveyed with overwhelming force their message of Spacer hopes and Spacer longings.
And this tape was a mauki chant, so familiar and so compelling that it brought tears to Ben’s eyes.
Yet, in some ways it was different from any mauki chant he had ever heard before.
He had listened for several minutes before he realized that he was not understanding the words.
There was no question that words were being sung. They were clear and distinct in every syllable, and they seemed to match perfectly the eerie minors and halftones of the lament. For a moment Ben thought his ears were playing tricks on him, because the words were almost familiar, almost understandable—but not quite. He had the feeling that if only he could listen more intently he might be able to distinguish them, but even as he listened he realized that this was not so. Nor was he the only one—he saw the look of wonder and confusion on Tom’s face and knew the Earthman could not distinguish the words either.
A long while later the singing faded into silence, and the two stood staring at each other. Without a word Ben rewound the tape and played it again. Still the words remained obscure.
“I don’t understand it,” Tom Barron said finally, breaking the silence.
“Neither do I,” Ben said.
“But what language is it?”
“I never heard it before in my life. But this is one of the keys my father spoke of.”
“But what good is it? What does it mean, and why is it so important for you to guard it?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said thoughtfully. “At least, not now.” He took the tape out of the player, wrapped it carefully in the pouch and slipped it into his pocket. “If the tape and the belt are keys my father was keeping, what does that suggest to you?”
“That there’s a lock somewhere that they will open,” Tom Barron said.
“Yes,” Ben Trefon said softly. He stood silent for a moment, still hearing the mauki chant ringing in his ears. Then he shook his head and started for the door. “Yes,” he said again. “For once I think you are one hundred per cent right.”
5. The Phantom Ship
IT WAS ALMOST dark when Ben Trefon and Tom Barron returned to the little scout ship. As the sun sank below the ridge of hills on the horizon the sky had turned a glorious purple; now it was fading to velvet black, pierced by a myriad of stars. Already the cold night wind was boring down from the north as the temperature of the thin Martian atmosphere plummeted, and already the first sprinkling of red dust and sand whirled in eddies around the ruins of the once great house as the desert moved in to reclaim its own.
Joyce had food prepared for them, and Ben Trefon and his two prisoners ate in gloomy silence. None of them had any appetite. Ben sat apart from the Barrons, staring through the view screen at the darkening landscape.
When it was too dark to see any more, he turned away. “So that’s the end of it,” he said with an edge of bitterness in his voice. “For three hundred years that house has stood there. It was built the hard way, with muscle and sweat. None of your great building machines to help. The foundations were chiseled and blasted out of bedrock, and the stone for the walls was carried up from the rim of the Rift and laid in the walls piece by piece. Three hundred years, and now a heap of rubble.” The Barrons joined him in front of the view screen. Since the visit to the vault Tom had been strangely subdued, hardly talking even to his sister, and the girl’s face was pale.
“So that was your home,” she said finally.
Ben nodded.
“I didn’t believe you, at first. It just didn’t seem possible that Spacers would have homes. I always thought of them as wandering from place to place like the Arabs on our own deserts.”
“There isn’t so much difference,” Ben Trefon said. “After all, the space between the planets is a desert, a lot more barren than any desert you’ve ever seen on Earth. And even your Arabs have oases, don’t they? Places they return to, places to stop and rest, places with water and shade and comfort.” He pointed toward the ruins of the house below. “I can remember the great gatherings we had in those halls,” he said. “Spacers from all over the solar system would stop here, and they would always be welcome. The women were always singing here, and the children had plenty of room to run.” Ben smiled. “I can remember when I was very small, maybe five or six, I found one of the old Martian tunnels, down there in the Rift. It must have run for miles back into these hills. I searched and searched, because I’d heard stories of underground chambers filled with diamonds and guarded by dragons. Of course, those were only stories—the chambers were used as water reservoirs to provide moisture for the crops when the runoff was over, back when the Martians were here. They must have been a brave people, but bravery wasn’t enough. They finally died. And now we’re gone, too.”