“Beneath the polar ice of the Red Planet lie the secrets of the immemorially ancient First Ones…”
We offer you today another story in the further adventures of Niksin Kyboc and Dr. Demetria Palaeologina, in the alternate future history of the Interplanetary League. This time, we find the intrepid space explorers on Mars, investigating the mystery of an ancient, prehuman civilization…
—T. J. Quaine
Two figures leapt from the small atomic jetlighter that had alighted upon the dry ice glacier.
They jumped out in the teeth of a howling gale, a terrifying hurricane of ice fragments and blistering dust, a maelstrom of sound and elemental rage, which signalized the onset of one of the notorious summertime polar cyclones for which the Red Planet was famous. The jetlighter had settled in the lee of a craggy, imposing outcropping of dark, volcanic rock, but, even so, the vehicle rocked and staggered amid the buffets and blows of the storm, which not even the great mass of grotesquely figured basalt could sufficiently abate.
The two human figures, so small and pathetic before the tremendous forces of the ancient Planet of War, seemed to consider for a moment, and then one of them directed the other’s attention to the yawning mouth of a small cave or grotto that appeared at the base of the black cliff.
Slowly, painfully, against the tearing winds, the figures struggled toward the pitiful refuge. The going was difficult, and precarious; the shards of carbon dioxide ice particles, ripped from the glacial icecap’s surface, tore at their thick fur garments, and blistered the lenses of their protective eyewear. For a time, visibility was reduced to less than an arm’s breadth; it was then that danger lay heavily upon the pair, and survival threatened to elude these two…who had followed it often, and unerringly, amid the twilit gloom of despair and death. There was a moment—yes, there came a time when the leading figure turned upon the wrong track, wandering errantly through the featureless and colorless blindness of the blizzard, and death was perilously near. But the second figure tugged gently but insistently upon the first figure’s arm, and, after a moment’s brief hesitation, the two turned back upon the right course, and were soon within the comforting ambit of the small grotto in the black cliff.
The first figure produced a small atomic torch from its heavy fur coat, and used it to cast a penetrating beam of blue-tinged light about the cave; it was large, and relatively free of piled snow and ice. Further back, they saw that it was gratifyingly absent of any ice at all—somehow, miraculously, this small grotto or cavern had been spared the embrace of the polar ice, which had battened upon Mars’ north polar expanse, the immense Planum Boreum, since long before the earliest human civilizations had reared their towers of fabulous orichalc upon the shattered, antediluvian continent of Mu.
Together, arm-in-arm, the two figures staggered toward the dry interior of the cave to seek shelter and refuge from the raging storm that had blanketed the outside in a waste of white. And as they went, the place grew warmer, wetter—dank with an unexpected humidity.
Finally, the warmth became unbearable. In unison, the two began to divest themselves of their copious cloaks of thermal fur—the only usable product of the polar ice-worm, a weird Martian invertebrate that was neither worm nor mammal, but whose soft white coat of not-quite-hairs was the most thermally insulating material in the Solar System.
After a time, they doffed their polar glasses, useless now from the scouring of the ice particles, and shed the thermal face masks and piezoelectric cloaks—those miracles of League science that converted the movements of their limbs into electrical energy, in order to power their heated garments and electronic equipment. Each of them took a breath from the miniature oxygen generators that were fitted into their face masks—a concession to the still alien and hostile environmental conditions of the Red Planet, which was then only in the very earliest stages of artificial “terrestrification.” Eventually, they cast even these aside.
In the reflected light of the atomic torch, the first figure proved to be a tall and powerfully built man, with rough-hewn yet handsome features that were famous throughout the System: gray, thoughtful eyes deeply set beneath a craggy brow; the strong, square jaw of a leader, dusted with several days’ stubble; and the whole surmounted by a shock of dark hair shot through with streaks of white. The same light revealed the second figure—a personage no less famous than the first—to be a woman, a delicate creature of shapely curves and liquid grace; her dark, tilted eyes and olive skin, her proud nose and sensuous lips and dense ringlets of golden hair were the easily recognized hallmarks of one of the most renowned beauties in the entire human oikoumene. They were, of course, Niksin and Demetria Kyboc, the famous husband-and-wife explorers, adventurers, and elucidators of mystery.
And right now they were in about as FUBAR a situation as one could imagine. On furlough from the Interplanetary League, they were supposed to be doing recon work in the northern Martian plains for the Terrestrial and Planetary Defence Force; it was mostly general surveillance and photo-mapping work, conducted in support of mopping-up operations in the wake of the recently concluded First Interplanetary War against the Aöe, the horrific “Brains of Mars.” In reality, it was intended to be more of a vacation for the two—and a kind of second honeymoon. But the sudden appearance of the great polar cyclone had occasioned an emergency landing on the icecap, and now the two were isolated and alone in an unexplored part of the Red Planet, their communications severed and their only lifeline—a fragile jetlighter, and not even one of the newer models—rocked and buffeted by the gales of the icy hurricane without.
“I’ll tell you what, old girl,” Niksin muttered, taking another sip at his respirator and eyeing the cavern with distaste, “that was a close one. Another minute or two and we’d have been nothing but two crimson smears on that glacier outside.”
His wife merely pursed her lips and shook her head at the characteristic crudity of the observation. As her eyes grew accustomed to the low light in the cavern, she began to examine their surroundings with greater care and attention.
“Oh Niksin, what is this place? Have you ever heard of anything like this…a cave system in the polar expanse, and so anomalously free of ice? Shine the torch over there…yes, that’s it…look, it seems to extend for miles, and beneath the icecap! Oh husband, this is extraordinary!”
Her eyes danced with excitement, and the thrill of discovery; Niksin Kyboc knew that look of old, and groaned inwardly a little. He had hoped to spend some time in peace here in this fortuitous grotto, maybe get the chance to stretch his legs a little, but mainly he hoped to avoid unnecessary adventure for a bit, until the cyclone blew over and they could resume their “mission”…which mostly consisted of amorous lovemaking punctuated by occasional cartographic work. What he vehemently did not want to do was go traipsing about through some unexplored Martian cavern system with a wife who had demonstrably more curiosity than common sense.
“And it’s so hot in here, Niksin!” she appended, impatiently peeling off, first her thermal undergarments, then her standard enviro-suit, until she had finally stripped down to nothing but a few insignificant and entirely inadequate underthings. Her skin was flushed and dewed with perspiration; at first, Niksin was alarmed, thinking she was suffering from some sort of rapid-onset hypothermia. But then he noticed that he too was feeling an unwonted and uncomfortable sort of heat, coupled with an almost unbearable humidity. Following his wife’s cue, he began to strip off his clothing—right down to his skivvies.
“Good Lord!” he gasped. “You’re not kidding. This place is hotter than a Venusian vhasth-jungle at noon on midsummer! I almost prefer the blizzard outside.”
Demetria regarded her nearly naked husband with a raised eyebrow and a slight smirk; the sight of him in the torchlight elicited more than a few fond memories of their first and second honeymoons, and she said as much. Niksin smiled, grabbed her by the waist, and crushed her tiny figure against him.
“My you’re a filthy-minded, wanton, and meretricious little trollop,” he laughed, before obliterating her retort with an unceremonious and smothering kiss.
Demetria wrenched herself from his grasp, and slapped him playfully.
“Not here and not now,” she commanded, shaking her head in mock disappointment. “Besides, you left your rubbers in the jetlighter—and I’m in no mood to whelp another one of your bastards anytime in the foreseeable future, thank you very much.” Which flippant statement was accompanied, of course, by much irreverent laughter.
Niksin opened his mouth, doubtless to utter something shocking and highly disrespectful, but the words he meant to speak never fell from his lips. For just at the moment that he turned to his wife, he discerned the unmistakable flicker of a dim, bluish light emanating from further back in the cavern. And in that flicker he recognized something else—deliberate, purposive movement.
“Demi!” he hissed, employing the diminutive of his wife’s name, which he only used in times of utmost urgency—largely because she hated it so. She marked the usage, and the tone of his voice, and turned suddenly to face him, startled.
“I think we may not be alone in our refugium,” he whispered, and nodded in the direction of the light. Demetria looked in the direction indicated, and froze at the sight of the dancing illumination—and what it might signify.
Instinctively, given her state of undress and the natural vulnerability that was its corollary, she gripped her husband’s arm and shrank against him. All the bravado and jocularity of but a few moments ago was vanished as completely as her sense of security and ease. There was danger nearby, or at least its threat, and the hairs on the back of her neck lifted at the thought of something unknown sharing the cavern with them.
“What do you think it could be?” she wondered, huddling against her husband’s considerably larger frame. Niksin muttered something vague and unhelpful, and bent to fish his N-ray pistol—a very recent model, just issued by the TPDF—from the pile of clothing on the floor.
“I have no idea what’s down there, wife,” he said, brandishing the weapon as if it were a broadsword and he a pagan warrior of old, “but I mean to find out, and ascertain its intentions. We need this shelter, Demi, or we perish; whatever’s down there must learn to live with us or stop living.”
There was little else to be said. Slowly, cautiously, the two crept along the dark passageway that wound further below and into the black, basaltic rock of the volcanic outcropping, Niksin leading the way with the N-ray pistol and atomic torch in either hand, while his wife discreetly followed a few paces behind. As they went, the atmosphere grew moister, hotter, more humid and oppressive with each step; it was like descending into the fetid den of some impossible Martian demon…as if they were wandering into the Red Planet’s own version of hell.
The flickering blue light, meanwhile, and the impression of shadows of moving figures continued—but there was something less menacing, less purposeful and aware about them, now that they drew closer. If anything, there was an impression that they had happened upon something unawares, that they had, in fact, stumbled upon a scene of life that was entirely oblivious to their existence. There was an aloofness about it all, a detachment that allayed the immediate fears of the two intruders—though it did not dispel them entirely.
Suddenly, Demetria uttered a sharp gasp, and roughly shouldered her husband aside; she ran a few paces ahead of him, ignoring his hushed cries, and peered excitedly around the turn in the passageway that let onto the chamber or alcove or whatever it was whence the blue light emanated.
“Oh, this is marvelous, Niksin!” she cried, and looked back at her husband with eyes that seemed to reflect the eagerness and excitement that had so suddenly possessed her.
“Put that silly weapon down, and come look at this.”
Startled at the sudden change in his wife’s demeanor, but trusting as always her sense and judgment, he lowered the pistol, and ran to her side.
“Look, husband,” she repeated, “have you ever seen anything like it?”
And he looked.
It was a room, clearly artificial, unquestionably hewn somehow from the black basalt of that curious volcanic formation whereunder they stood; the regularity of the chamber, and the definite adumbrations of some sort of aesthetic, even if wholly alien, in its dimensions and configurations, loudly bespoke the deliberateness of its creation. Stranger still, its walls were lined with a baffling array of curious “machines,” if that was the word for them…no, they were more than that. They seemed to be living things, great, polypous, incredibly ancient living things that pulsed with the unmistakable quick of life, even though it had ebbed low indeed after the elapse of unimaginable kalpas of time. It was from small, moist openings or spiracles in these objects that the humid “breath” emanated, the same that filled the whole cavern with the anomalous heat and humidity.
But it was what these things, living machines of some kind, projected into the dense air of the room—via an opaque crystalline lens or “eye” of some sort that each seemed to possess—that really astonished Niksin. It was, plainly, a three-dimensional series of images, flickering in a queer, bluish kind of light—the very one they had descried from the antechamber—and depicting a repetitive sequence of some definite kind. There was an incompleteness and roughness to the images, which suggested a distortion arising from great age and the breakdown of the internal mechanisms or organs of the living “machines;” but, unquestionably, here was some sort of “cinemascope” or motion picture house produced by an unknown and alien technology, and belonging to an unknown and alien civilization.
“Lord, girl!” he exclaimed to his wife, “what is the meaning of all this?”
Some of the images seemed faintly familiar. They seemed to be schematic representations of the known astronomical objects in unknown or unfamiliar configurations; there were what seemed to be planets, uncannily reminiscent of Mars, and the Earth, and even Venus, but with certain features missing or rearranged, and subtly off in some indescribable way. There were what seemed occasionally to be flickerings of star charts, perhaps for navigational or even just purely astronomical and scientific purposes, although none of the stars or their configurations seemed familiar; and then there was an image of what was unmistakably the great nebular spiral of the Milky Way Galaxy, viewed as if from the perspective of one of the Magellanic Clouds.
Demetria strode into the chamber, into the midst of the images—all her fear, her trepidation utterly vanished…her only emotions were pure, unslaked curiosity and fascination. Her naked, sweat-dewed limbs glowed eerily in the reflected blue light of the strange images, and she turned to her husband with an expression of ineffable joy on her flushed, beautiful face.
“Don’t you see what this is, Niksin?” she cried. She pirouetted amid the dancing images, like an exuberant schoolgirl, and laughed at her husband’s expression of incomprehension.
“It is the confirmation of the ancient legends of the Aoë, which the military linguists and lexicographers have discerned in the curious idioms of the great Brains of Mars. Don’t you recall that monograph I was reading—the one written just last year, by Dr. Jessica Ramey? It spoke of the legends of the Ÿhllóë, ‘the First Ones,’ an ancient race of beings that the Martian Minds believed visited their world many millions of years ago; Dr. Ramey assumed these were merely legends, but don’t you see what this means? These are the ruins of Vhara-Ÿhlloéth, the ‘Place of the First Ones,’ the great polar fastness that was fabled to be the remote, unvisited outpost of the Ÿhllóë on Mars.”
She looked in awe upon the “machines” arrayed around the chamber.
“Everyone thought this place was nothing but a myth! No one dared to imagine that the Ÿhllóë were real…that ‘the First Ones’ represented an actual race of alien beings that came to the Solar System millions of years ago.”
Utterly enthralled by her unexpected discovery, Demetria skipped over to her husband, and, taking both of his hands in hers, pulled him into the room of wonders.
“We have found it, husband,” she exclaimed, “proof of the existence of the half-fabulous Ÿhllóë, and without even trying!”
Niksin gazed at the flickering images in wonder, and marveled at the eerie mystery of the place.
“But what were these creatures? What did they look like…and where have they gone?”
She merely shook her head, and sighed.
“I don’t know…can’t even begin to guess. Judging by the looks of this volcanic rock, and from what we know of the onset of the Martian glacial ages, I imagine this place can’t be anything less than a hundred million years old. Perhaps it was some sort of astronomical observatory, or a kind of astrogational map-room; maybe its purpose was something else entirely, incomprehensible to us. As to what the First Ones looked like, and whither they went, and what was their purpose here…well, those are the real questions, husband, and it’s up to us to find the answers.”
She smiled, then, and drew her husband’s lips down to hers, and kissed him…the surest sign of happiness and contentment that Dr. Demetria Kyboc could muster. Thrilled at the prospect of new discoveries, and filled with thoughts of the future, she lay her head on his chest, and contemplated the weird wonders of Vhara-Ÿhlloéth, the Place of the First Ones.
The horrific gales of the polar cyclone were beginning to abate. They could both tell this by the diminution of the endless droning whistle of the piping winds, which had never ceased since they entered the grotto, and was even audible in this chamber of the wonders of Vhara-Ÿhlloéth.
Yes, the storm was dying. Soon, it would be calm and clear without, and they would return to the jetlighter and thence eventually to the cities and civilization of the Interplanetary League.
And what a strange and wondrous tale they would have to tell…the first, but hardly the last, that men would ever hear of the mysterious Ÿhllóë, “the First Ones,” the makers of the strange and alien First Civilization…
[Please join us in the next issue of The Florilegium of Phantasy, this time for another eldritch fairy tale courtesy of the talented Julie Jaquith, entitled “The Princess in the Marble Mausoleum.” We think you “Sleeping Beauty” fans will especially enjoy this one…]