Amelia said: “We will have no option in the matter. It is not so much what we do, as what is to be done with us.”
“Are you saying that we are in danger?”
“Possibly … as soon as it is realized that we are not of this world. After all, what would be likely to happen to a man who came to Earth from another world?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Therefore we can have no idea what is in store for us. We shall have to hope for the best, and trust that in spite of their primitive society we will be well treated. I should not care to spend the rest of my days like an animal.”
“Nor I. But is that likely, or even feasible?”
“We have seen how the slaves are treated. If we were taken for two of those wretches, then we could well be put to work.”
“But we have already been taken for two of the overseers,” I reminded her. “Some accident of clothing, or something about our appearance, has compounded in our favour.”
“We still need to be careful. There is no telling what we shall find here.”
In spite of the resolution in our words, we were in no condition to take charge of our fate, for in addition to the multitude of questions that surrounded our prospects, we were both dishevelled, tired and hungry from our ordeal in the desert. I knew that Amelia could feel no better than I, and I was exhausted. Both of us were slurring our words, and in spite of our attempts to articulate our feelings, the realization of where we had been deposited by the Time Machine had been the final blow to our morale.
Outside, I could hear the slaves being herded from the train, and the distinctive crackle of the electrical whips was an unpleasant reminder of our precarious position.
“The train will be moving off soon,” I said, pushing Amelia gently into an upright position. “We have come to a city, and we must look for shelter there.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“We will have to.”
I went to the far side of the carriage, and opened the nearest door. I took a quick glance along the length of the train; evidently the slaves were being taken from the opposite side of the train for here there was no movement, bar one man sauntering slowly away from me. I went back to Amelia, who was still sitting passively.
“In a few minutes the train will be going back to where we came from,” I said. “Do you wish to spend another night in the desert?”
“Of course not. I’m just a little nervous at the thought of entering the city.”
I said “We must eat some food, Amelia, and find somewhere safe and warm to sleep. The very fact that this is a city is to our advantage: it must be large enough for us to go unnoticed. We have already survived a great ordeal, and I do not think we need fear anything further. Tomorrow we will try to establish what rights we have.”
Amelia shook her head lethargically, but to my relief she then rose wearily to her feet and followed me from the carriage. I gave her my hand to help her to the ground, and she took it. Her grasp was without pressure.
ii
The sound of the whips echoed from the other side of the train as we hurried towards where a glow of light emanated from behind a protruding corner. There was no sign of the man I had seen earlier.
As we came round the corner we saw ahead of us a tall doorway, set well back into the brick wall and painted white. Over the top was a sign, illuminated in some manner from behind, and bearing a legend in a style of printing that was totally incomprehensible to me. It was this sign that drew our attention, rather than the door itself, for this was our first sight of Martian written language.
After we had stared at this for a few seconds—the lettering was black on a white background, but here the superficial similarity with Earth scripts came to an end—I led Amelia forward, anxious to find warmth and food. It was bitterly cold in the train-shed, for it was open to the night air.
There was no handle on the door, and for a moment I wondered if there would be some alien mechanism that would defy us. I pushed experimentally, and discovered that one side of the door moved slightly.
I must have been weak from our sojourn in the wilds, for beyond this I was incapable of shifting it. Amelia helped me, and in a moment we found that we could push the door open far enough for us to pass through, but as soon as we released it the heavy device swung back and closed with a slam. We had come into a short corridor, no longer than five or six yards, at the end of which was another door. The corridor was completely featureless, with the exception of one electrical incandescent lamp fixed to the ceiling. We went to the second door and pushed it open, feeling a similar weight. This door also closed quickly behind us.
Amelia said: “My ears feel as though they are blocked.”
“Mine too,” I said. “I think the pressure of air is greater here.”
We were in a second corridor, identical to the first. Amelia remembered something she had been taught when she was in Switzerland, and showed me how to relieve the pressure in my ears by holding my nose and blowing gently.
As we passed through the third door there was another increase in the density of the air.
“I feel I can breathe at last,” I said, wondering how we had survived for so long in the thin air outside.
“We must not over-exert ourselves,” Amelia said. “I feel a little dizzy already.”
Even though we were anxious to continue on our way we waited in the corridor for a few minutes longer. Like Amelia, I was feeling light-headed in the richer air, and this sensation was sharpened by a barely detectable hint of ozone. My fingertips were tingling as my blood was renewed with this fresh supply of oxygen, and this coupled with the fact of the lighter Martian gravity—which, while we had been in the desert, we had attributed to some effect of high altitude—lent a spurious feeling of great energy. Spurious it surely was, for I knew we must both be near the end of the tether; Amelia’s shoulders were stooped, and her eyes were still half-closed.
I placed my arm around Amelia’s shoulders.
“Come along,” I said. “We do not have much further to go.”
“I am still a little frightened.”
“There is nothing that can threaten us,” I said, but in truth I shared her fears. Neither of us was in any position to understand the full implications of our predicament. Deep inside, I was feeling the first tremblings of an instinctive dread of the alien, the strange, the exotic.
We stepped slowly forward, pushed our way through the next door, and at last found ourselves looking out across a part of the Martian city.
iii
Outside the door through which we had come a street ran from left to right, and directly opposite us were two buildings. These, at first sight, loomed large and black, so used were we to the barrenness of the desert, but on a second examination we saw that they were scarcely bigger than the grander private houses of our own cities. Each one stood alone, and was intricately ornamented with moulded plaster on the outside walls; the doors were large, and there were few windows. If this lends to such buildings an aura of grace or elegance, then it should be added that both of the two buildings we then saw were in a state of advanced decay. One, indeed, had one wall partially collapsed, and a door hung open on a hinge. In the interiors we could see much rubble and litter, and it was clear that neither had been occupied for many years. The walls still standing were cracked and crumbling, and there was no visible sign that a roof still stood.