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  Doorway to Kal-Jmar
  By Stuart Fleming
  Two men had died before Syme Rector's guns
     
    to give him the key to the ancient city of
     
    Kal-Jmar—a city of untold wealth, and of
     
    robots that made desires instant commands.
   
    [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
     
    Planet Stories Winter 1944.
     
    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
     
    the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
  The tall man loitered a moment before a garish window display, his eyes
  impassive in his space-burned face, as the Lillis patrolman passed.
  Then he turned, burying his long chin in the folds of his sand cape,
  and took up the pursuit of the dark figure ahead once more.
   
    Above, the city's multicolored lights were reflected from the
  translucent Dome—a distant, subtly distorted Lillis, through which the
  stars shone dimly.
   
    Getting through that dome had been his first urgent problem, but now he
  had another, and a more pressing one. It had been simple enough to pass
  himself off as an itinerant prospector and gain entrance to the city,
  after his ship had crashed in the Mare Cimmerium. But the rest would
  not be so simple. He had to acquire a spaceman's identity card, and he
  had to do it fast. It was only a matter of time until the Triplanet
  Patrol gave up the misleading trail he had made into the hill country,
  and concluded that he must have reached Lillis. After that, his only
  safety lay in shipping out on a freighter as soon as possible. He had
  to get off Mars, because his trail was warm, and the Patrol thorough.
   
    They knew, of course, that he was an outlaw—the very fact of the
  crashed, illegally-armed ship would have told them that. But they
  didn't know that he was Syme Rector, the most-wanted and most-feared
  raider in the System. In that was his only advantage.
   
    He walked a little faster, as his quarry turned up a side street and
  then boarded a moving ramp to an upper level. He watched until the
  short, wide-shouldered figure in spaceman's harness disappeared over
  the top of the ramp, and then followed.
   
    The man was waiting for him at the mouth of the ascending tunnel.
   
    Syme looked at him casually, without a flicker of expression, and
  started to walk on, but the other stepped into his path. He was quite
  young, Syme saw, with a fighter's shoulders under the white leather,
  and a hard, determined thrust to his firm jaw.
   
    "All right," the boy said quietly. "What is it?"
   
    "I don't understand," Syme said.
   
    "The game, the angle. You've been following me. Do you want trouble?"
   
    "Why, no," Syme told him bewilderedly. "I haven't been following you.
  I—"
   
    The boy knuckled his chin reflectively. "You could be lying," he said
  finally. "But maybe I've made a mistake." Then—"Okay, citizen, you can
  clear—but don't let me catch you on my tail again."
   
    Syme murmured something and turned away, feeling the spaceman's eyes
  on the small of his back until he turned the corner. At the next
  street he took a ramp up, crossed over and came down on the other side
  a block away. He waited until he saw the boy's broad figure pass the
  intersection, and then followed again more cautiously.
   
    It was risky, but there was no other way. The signatures, the data,
  even the photograph on the card could be forged once Syme got his hands
  on it, but the identity card itself—that oblong of dark diamondite,
  glowing with the tiny fires of radioactivity—that could not be
  imitated, and the only way to get it was to kill.
   
    Up ahead was the Founders' Tower, the tallest building in Lillis. The
  boy strode into the entrance lobby, bought a ticket for the observation
  platform, and took the elevator. As soon as his car was out of sight in
  the transparent tube, Syme followed. He put a half-credit slug into the
  machine, took the punctured slip of plastic that came out. The ticket
  went into a scanning slot in the wall of the car, and the elevator
  whisked him up.
  The tower was high, more than a hundred meters above the highest level
  of the city, and the curved dome that kept air in Lillis was close
  overhead. Syme looked up, after his first appraising glance about the
  platform, and saw the bright-blue pinpoint of Earth. The sight stirred
  a touch of nostalgia in him, as it always did, but he put it aside.
   
    The boy was hunched over the circular balustrade a little distance
  away. Except for him, the platform was empty. Syme loosened his slim,
  deadly energy pistol in its holster and padded catlike toward the
  silent figure.
   
    It was over in a minute. The boy whirled as he came up, warned by
  some slight sound, or by the breath of Syme's passage in the still
  air. He opened his mouth to shout, and brought up his arm in a swift,
  instinctive gesture. But the blow never landed. Syme's pistol spat its
  silent white pencil of flame, and the boy crumpled to the floor with a
  minute, charred hole in the white leather over his chest.
  Syme stooped over him swiftly, found a thick wallet and thrust it into
  his pocket without a second glance. Then he raised the body in his arms
  and thrust it over the parapet.
   
    It fell, and in the same instant Syme felt a violent tug at his wrist.
  Before he could move to stop himself, he was over the edge. Too late,
  he realized what had happened—one of the hooks on the dead spaceman's
  harness had caught the heavy wristband of his chronometer. He was
  falling, linked to the body of his victim!
   
    Hardly knowing what he did, he lashed out wildly with his other arm,
  felt his fingertips catch and bite into the edge of the balustrade. His
  body hit the wall of the tower with a thump, and, a second later, the
  corpse below him hit the wall. Then they both hung there, swaying a
  little and Syme's fingers slipped a little with each motion.
   
    Gritting his teeth, he brought the magnificent muscles of his arm into
  play, raising the forearm against the dead weight of the dangling body.
  Fraction by slow fraction of an inch, it came up. Syme could feel the
  sweat pouring from his brow, running saltily into his eyes. His arms
  felt as if they were being torn from their sockets. Then the hook
  slipped free, and the tearing, unbearable weight vanished.
   
    The reaction swung Syme against the building again, and he almost
  lost his slippery hold on the balustrade. After a moment he heard the
  spaceman's body strike with a squashy thud, somewhere below.
   
    He swung up his other arm, got a better grip on the balustrade. He
  tried cautiously to get a leg up, but the motion loosened his hold on
  the smooth surface again. He relaxed, thinking furiously. He could hold
  on for another minute at most; then it was the final blast-off.
   
    He heard running footsteps, and then a pale face peered over the ledge
  at him. He realized suddenly that the whole incident could have taken
  only a few seconds. He croaked, "Get me up."
   
    Wordlessly, the man clasped thin fingers around his wrist. The other
  pulled, with much puffing and panting, and with his help Syme managed
  to get a leg over the edge and hoist his trembling body to safety.
   
    "Are you all right?"
  Syme looked at the man, nursing the tortured muscles of his arms. His
  rescuer was tall and thin, of indeterminate age. He had light, sandy
  hair, a sharp nose, and—oddly conflicting—pale, serious eyes and a
  humorous wide mouth. He was still panting.
   
    "I'm not hurt," Syme said. He grinned, his white teeth flashing in his
  dark, lean face. "Thanks for giving me a hand."
   
    "You scared hell out of me," said the man. "I heard a thud. I
  thought—you'd gone over." He looked at Syme questioningly.
   
    "That was my bag," the outlaw said quickly. "It slipped out of my hand,
  and I overbalanced myself when I grabbed for it."
   
    The man sighed. "I need a drink.
  You
  need a drink. Come on." He
  picked up a small black suitcase from the floor and started for the
  elevator, then stopped. "Oh—your bag. Shouldn't we do something about
  that?"
   
    "Never mind," said Syme, taking his arm. "The shock must have busted it
  wide open. My laundry is probably all over Lillis by now."
   
    They got off at the amusement level, three tiers down, and found a
  cafe around the corner. Syme wasn't worried about the man he had just
  killed. He had heard no second thud, so the body must have stayed on
  the first outcropping of the tower it struck. It probably wouldn't be
  found until morning.
   
    And he had the wallet. When he paid for the first round of
  culcha
  , he
  took it out and stole a glance at the identification card inside. There
  it was—his ticket to freedom. He began feeling expansive, and even
  friendly toward the slender, mouse-like man across the table. It was
  the
  culcha
  , of course. He knew it, and didn't care. In the morning
  he'd find a freighter berth—in as big a spaceport as Lillis, there
  were always jobs open. Meanwhile, he might as well enjoy himself, and
  it was safer to be seen with a companion than to be alone.
   
    He listened lazily to what the other was saying, leaning his tall,
  graceful body back into the softly-cushioned seat.
   
    "Lissen," said Harold Tate. He leaned forward on one elbow, slipped,
  caught himself, and looked at the elbow reproachfully. "Lissen," he
  said again, "I trust you, Jones. You're obvi-obviously an adventurer,
  but you have an honest face. I can't see it very well at the moment,
  but I hic!—pardon—seem to recall it as an honest face. I'm going to
  tell you something, because I need your help!—help." He paused. "I
  need a guide. D'you know this part of Mars well?"
   
    "Sure," said Syme absently. Out in the center of the floor, an AG
  plate had been turned on. Five Venusian girls were diving and twisting
  in its influence, propelling themselves by the motion of their
  delicately-webbed feet and trailing long gauzy streamers of synthesilk
  after them. Syme watched them through narrowed lids, feeling the glow
  of
  culcha
  inside him.
   
    "I wanta go to Kal-Jmar," said Tate.
   
    Syme snapped to attention, every nerve tingling. An indefinable sense,
  a hunch that had served him well before, told him that something big
  was coming—something that promised adventure and loot for Syme Rector.
  "Why?" he asked softly. "Why to Kal-Jmar?"
   
    Harold Tate told him, and later, when Syme had taken him to his rooms,
  he showed him what was in his little black suitcase. Syme had been
  right; it was big.
  Kal-Jmar was the riddle of the Solar System. It was the only remaining
  city of the ancient Martian race—the race that, legends said, had
  risen to greater heights than any other Solar culture. The machines,
  the artifacts, the records of the Martians were all there, perfectly
  preserved inside the city's bubble-like dome, after God knew how many
  thousands of years. But they couldn't be reached.
   
    For Kal-Jmar's dome was not the thing of steelite that protected
  Lillis: it was a tenuous, globular field of force that defied analysis
  as it defied explosives and diamond drills. The field extended both
  above and below the ground, and tunneling was of no avail. No one knew
  what had happened to the Martians, whether they were the ancestors of
  the present decadent Martian race, or a different species. No one knew
  anything about them or about Kal-Jmar.
   
    In the early days, when the conquest of Mars was just beginning, Earth
  scientists had been wild to get into the city. They had observed it
  from every angle, taken photographs of its architecture and the robots
  that still patrolled its fantastically winding streets, and then they
  had tried everything they knew to pierce the wall.
   
    Later, however, when every unsuccessful attempt had precipitated a
  bloody uprising of the present-day Martians—resulting in a rapid
  dwindling of the number of Martians—the Mars Protectorate had stepped
  in and forbidden any further experiments; forbidden, in fact, any
  Earthman to go near the place.
   
    Thus matter had stood for over a hundred years, until Harold Tate.
  Tate, a physicist, had stumbled on a field that seemed to be identical
  in properties to the Kal-Jmar dome; and what is more, he had found a
  force that would break it down.
   
    And so he had made his first trip to Mars, and within twenty-four
  hours, by the blindest of chances, blurted out his secret to Syme
  Rector, the scourge of the spaceways, the man with a thousand credits
  on his sleek, tigerish head.
   
    Syme's smile was not tigerish now; it was carefully, studiedly mild.
  For Tate was no longer drunk, and it was important that it should not
  occur to him that he had been indiscreet.
   
    "This is native territory we're coming to, Harold," he said. "Better
  strap on your gun."
   
    "Why. Are they really dangerous?"
   
    "They're unpredictable," Syme told him. "They're built differently, and
  they think differently. They breathe like us, down in their caverns
  where there's air, but they also eat sand, and get their oxygen that
  way."
   
    "Yes, I've heard about that," Tate said. "Iron oxide—very interesting
  metabolism." He got his energy pistol out of the compartment and
  strapped it on absently.
   
    Syme turned the little sand car up a gentle rise towards the tortuous
  hill country in the distance. "Not only that," he continued. "They
  eat the damndest stuff. Lichens and fungi and tumble-grass off the
  deserts—all full of deadly poisons, from arsenic up the line to
  xopite. They seem intelligent enough—in their own way—but they never
  come near our cities and they either can't or won't learn Terrestrial.
  When the first colonists came here, they had to learn
  their
  crazy
  language. Every word of it can mean any one of a dozen different
  things, depending on the inflection you give it. I can speak it some,
  but not much. Nobody can. We don't think the same."
   
    "So you think they might attack us?" Tate asked again, nervously.
   
    "They
  might
  do anything," Syme said curtly. "Don't worry about it."
   
    The hills were much closer than they had seemed, because of Mars'
  deceptively low horizon. In half an hour they were in the midst of a
  wilderness of fantastically eroded dunes and channels, laboring on
  sliding treads up the sides of steep hills only to slither down again
  on the other side.
  Syme stopped the car abruptly as a deep, winding channel appeared
  across their path. "Gully," he announced. "Shall we cross it, or follow
  it?"
   
    Tate peered through the steelite nose of the car. "Follow, I guess,"
  he offered. "It seems to go more or less where we're going, and if we
  cross it we'll only come to a couple dozen more."
   
    Syme nodded and moved the sand car up to the edge of the gully. Then he
  pressed a stud on the control board; a metal arm extruded from the tail
  of the car and a heavy spike slowly unscrewed from it, driving deep
  into the sand. A light on the board flashed, indicating that the spike
  was in and would bear the car's weight, and Syme started the car over
  the edge.
   
    As the little car nosed down into the gully, the metal arm left behind
  revealed itself to be attached to a length of thick, very strong wire
  cable, with a control cord inside. They inched down the almost vertical
  incline, unreeling the cable behind them, and starting minor landslides
  as they descended.
   
    Finally they touched bottom. Syme pressed another stud, and above, the
  metal spike that had supported them screwed itself out of the ground
  again and the cable reeled in.
   
    Tate had been watching with interest. "Very ingenious," he said. "But
  how do we get up again?"
   
    "Most of these gullies peter out gradually," said Syme, "but if we want
  or have to climb out where it's deep, we have a little harpoon gun that
  shoots the anchor up on top."
   
    "Good. I shouldn't like to stay down here for the rest of my
  natural life. Depressing view." He looked up at the narrow strip of
  almost-black sky visible from the floor of the gully, and shook his
  head.
   
    Neither Syme nor Tate ever had a chance to test the efficiency of their
  harpoon gun. They had traveled no more than five hundred meters, and
  the gully was as deep as ever, when Tate, looking up, saw a deeper
  blackness blot out part of the black sky directly overhead. He shouted,
  "Look out!" and grabbed for the nearest steering lever.
   
    The car wheeled around in a half circle and ran into the wall of the
  gully. Syme was saying, "What—?" when there was a thunderous crash
  that shook the sturdy walls of the car, as a huge boulder smashed into
  the ground immediately to their left.
   
    When the smoky red dust had cleared away, they saw that the left tread
  of the sand car was crushed beyond all recognition.
   
    Syme was cursing slowly and steadily with a deep, seething anger. Tate
  said, "I guess we walk from here on." Then he looked up again and
  caught a glimpse of the horde of beasts that were rushing up the gully
  toward them.
   
    "My God!" he said. "What are those?"
   
    Syme looked. "Those," he said bitterly, "are Martians."
   
    The natives, like all Martian fauna, were multi-legged. Also like all
  Martian fauna, they moved so fast that you couldn't see how many legs
  they did have. Actually, however, the natives had six legs apiece—or,
  more properly, four legs and two arms. Their lungs were not as large
  as they appeared, being collapsed at the moment. What caused the bulge
  that made their torsos look like sausages was a huge air bladder, with
  a valve arrangement from the stomach and feeding directly into the
  bloodstream.
   
    Their faces were vaguely canine, but the foreheads were high, and the
  lips were not split. They did resemble dogs, in that their thick black
  fur was splotched with irregulate patches of white. These patches of
  white were subject to muscular control and could be spread out fanwise;
  or, conversely, the black could be expanded to cover the white, which
  helped to take care of the extremes of Martian temperature. Right now
  they were mostly black.
   
    The natives slowed down and spread out to surround the wrecked sand
  car, and it could be seen that most of them were armed with spears,
  although some had the slim Benson energy guns—strictly forbidden to
  Martians.
   
    Syme stopped cursing and watched tensely. Tate said nothing, but he
  swallowed audibly.
   
    One Martian, who looked exactly like all the rest, stepped forward and
  motioned unmistakably for the two to come out. He waited a moment and
  then gestured with his energy gun. That gun, Syme knew from experience,
  could burn through a small thickness of steelite if held on the same
  spot long enough.
  "Come on," Syme said grimly. He rose and reached for a pressure suit,
  and Tate followed him.
   
    "What do you think they'll—" he began, and then stopped himself. "I
  know. They're unpredictable."
   
    "Yeah," said Syme, and opened the door. The air in the car
  whooshed
  into the near-vacuum outside, and he and Tate stepped out.
   
    The Martian leader looked at them enigmatically, then turned and
  started off. The other natives closed in on them, and they all bounded
  along under the weak gravity.
   
    They bounded along for what Syme figured as a good kilometer and a
  half, and they then reached a branch in the gully and turned down
  it, going lower all the time. Under the light of their helmet lamps,
  they could see the walls of the gully—a tunnel, now—getting darker
  and more solid. Finally, when Syme estimated they were about nine
  kilometers down, there was even a suggestion of moisture.
   
    The tunnel debouched at last into a large cavern. There was a
  phosphorescent gleam from fungus along the walls, but Syme couldn't
  decide how far away the far wall was. He noticed something else, though.
   
    "There's air here," he said to Tate. "I can see dust motes in it." He
  switched his helmet microphone from radio over to the audio membrane
  on the outside of the helmet. "
  Kalis methra
  ," he began haltingly,
  "
  seltin guna getal.
  "
   
    "Yes, there is air here," said the Martian leader, startlingly. "Not
  enough for your use, however, so do not open your helmets."
   
    Syme swore amazedly.
   
    "I thought you said they didn't speak Terrestrial," Tate said. Syme
  ignored him.
   
    "We had our reasons for not doing so," the Martian said.
   
    "But how—?"
   
    "We are telepaths, of course. On a planet which is nearly airless on
  its surface, we have to be. A tendency of the Terrestrial mind is to
  ignore the obvious. We have not had a spoken language of our own for
  several thousand years."
   
    He darted a glance at Syme's darkly scowling face. His own hairy face
  was expressionless, but Syme sensed that he was amused. "Yes, you're
  right," he said. "The language you and your fellows struggled to learn
  is a fraud, a hodge-podge concocted to deceive you."
   
    Tate looked interested. "But why this—this gigantic masquerade?"
   
    "You had nothing to give us," the Martian said simply.
   
    Tate frowned, then flushed. "You mean you avoided revealing yourselves
  because you—had nothing to gain from mental intercourse with us?"
   
    "Yes."
   
    Tate thought again. "But—"
   
    "No," the Martian interrupted him, "revealing the extent of our
  civilization would have spared us nothing at your people's hands. Yours
  is an imperialist culture, and you would have had Mars, whether you
  thought you were taking it from equals or not."
   
    "Never mind that," Syme broke in impatiently. "What do you want with
  us?"
   
    The Martian looked at him appraisingly. "You already suspect.
  Unfortunately, you must die."
  It was a weird situation, Syme thought. His mind was racing, but as yet
  he could see no way out. He began to wonder, if he did, could he keep
  the Martians from knowing about it? Then he realized that the Martian
  must have received that thought, too, and he was enraged. He stood,
  holding himself in check with an effort.
   
    "Will you tell us why?" Tate asked.
   
    "You were brought here for that purpose. It is part of our conception
  of justice. I will tell you and your—friend—anything you wish to
  know."
   
    Syme noticed that the other Martians had retired to the farther side of
  the cavern. Some were munching the glowing fungus. That left only the
  leader, who was standing alertly on all fours a short distance away
  from them, holding the Benson gun trained on them. Syme tried not to
  think about the gun, especially about making a grab for it. It was like
  trying not to think of the word "hippopotamus."
   
    Tate squatted down comfortably on the floor of the cavern, apparently
  unconcerned, but his hands were trembling slightly. "First why—" he
  began.
   
    "There are many secrets in Kal-Jmar," the Martian said, "among them a
  very simple catalyzing agent which could within fifty years transform
  Mars to a planet with Terrestrially-thick atmosphere."
   
    "I think I see," Tate said thoughtfully. "That's been the ultimate aim
  all along, but so far the problem has us licked. If we solved it, then
  we'd have all of Mars, not just the cities. Your people would die out.
  You couldn't have that, of course."
   
    He sighed deeply. He spread his gloved hands before him and looked
  at them with a queer intentness. "Well—how about the Martians—the
  Kal-Jmar Martians, I mean? I'd dearly love to know the answer to that
  one."
   
    "Neither of the alternatives in your mind is correct. They were not a
  separate species, although they were unlike us. But they were not our
  ancestors, either. They were the contemporaries of our ancestors."
   
    "Several thousand years ago Mars' loss of atmosphere began to make
  itself felt. There were two ways out. Some chose to seal themselves
  into cities like Kal-Jmar; our ancestors chose to adapt their bodies to
  the new conditions. Thus the race split. Their answer to the problem
  was an evasion; they remained static. Our answer was the true one, for
  we progressed. We progressed beyond the need of science; they remained
  its slaves. They died of a plague—and other causes.
   
    "You see," he finished gently, "our deception has caused a natural
  confusion in your minds. They were the degenerates, not we."
   
    "And yet," Tate mused, "you are being destroyed by contact with
  an—inferior—culture."
   
    "We hope to win yet," the Martian said.
   
    Tate stood up, his face very white. "Tell me one thing," he begged.
  "Will our two races ever live together in amity?"
   
    The Martian lowered his head. "That is for unborn generations." He
  looked at Tate again and aimed the energy gun. "You are a brave man,"
  he said. "I am sorry."
   
    Syme saw all his hopes of treasure and glory go glimmering down the
  sights of the Martian's Benson gun, and suddenly the pent-up rage in
  him exploded. Too swiftly for his intention to be telegraphed, before
  he knew himself what he meant to do, he hurled himself bodily into the
  Martian.
  It was like tangling with a draft horse. The Martian was astonishingly
  strong. Syme scrambled desperately for the gun, got it, but couldn't
  tear it out of the Martian's fingers. And all the time he could almost
  feel the Martian's telepathic call for help surging out. He heard the
  swift pad of his followers coming across the cavern.
   
    He put everything he had into one mighty, murderous effort. Every
  muscle fiber in his superbly trained body crackled and surged with
  power. He roared his fury. And the gun twisted out of the Martian's
  iron grip!
   
    He clubbed the prostrate leader with it instantly, then reversed the
  weapon and snapped a shot at the nearest Martian. The creature dropped
  his lance and fell without a sound.
   
    The next instant a ray blinked at him, and he rolled out of the way
  barely in time. The searing ray cut a swath over the leader's body and
  swerved to cut down on him. Still rolling, he fired at the holder of
  the weapon. The gun dropped and winked out on the floor.
   
    Syme jumped to his feet and faced his enemies, snarling like the
  trapped tiger he was. Another ray slashed at him, and he bent lithely
  to let it whistle over his head. Another, lower this time. He flipped
  his body into the air and landed upright, his gun still blazing. His
  right leg burned fiercely from a ray-graze, but he ignored it. And
  all the while he was mowing down the massed natives in great swaths,
  seeking out the ones armed with Bensons in swift, terrible slashes,
  dodging spears and other missiles in midair, and roaring at the top of
  his powerful lungs.
   
    At last there were none with guns left to oppose him. He scythed down
  the rest in two terrible, lightning sweeps of his ray, then dropped
  the weapon from blistered fingers.
   
    He was gasping for breath, and realized that he was losing air from
  the seared-open right leg of his suit. He reached for the emergency
  kit at his side, drawing in great, gasping breaths, and fumbled out
  a tube of sealing liquid. He spread the stuff on liberally, smearing
  it impartially over flesh and fabric. It felt like liquid hell on the
  burned, bleeding leg, but he kept on until the quick-drying fluid
  formed an airtight patch.
   
    Only then did he turn, to see Tate flattened against the wall behind
  him, his hands empty at his sides. "I'm sorry," Tate said miserably. "I
  could have grabbed a spear or something, but—I just couldn't, not even
  to save my own life. I—I halfway hoped they'd kill both of us."
   
    Syme glared at him and spat, too enraged to think of diplomacy. He
  turned and strode out of the cavern, carrying his right leg stiffly,
  but with his feral, tigerish head held high.
   
    He led the way, wordlessly, back to the wrecked sand car. Tate followed
  him with a hangdog, beaten air, as though he had just found something
  that shattered all his previous concepts of the verities in life, and
  didn't know what to do about it.
   
    Still silently, Syme refilled his oxygen tank, watched Tate do the
  same, and then picked up two spare tanks and the precious black
  suitcase and handed one of the tanks to Tate. Then he stumped around
  to the back of the car and inspected the damage. The cable reel, which
  might have drawn them out of the gully, was hopelessly smashed. That
  was that.
  They started off down the canyon, Syme urging the slighter man to
  a fast clip, even though his leg was already stiffening. When they
  finally reached a climbable spot, Syme was limping badly and Tate was
  obviously exhausted.
   
    They clambered wearily out onto the level sands again just as the
  small, blazing sun was setting. "Luck," grunted Syme. "Our only chance
  of getting near the city is at night." He peered around, shading his
  eyes from the sun's glare with a gauntleted hand. "See that?"
   
    Following his pointing finger, Tate saw a faint, ephemeral arc showing
  above a line of low hills in the distance. "Kal-Jmar," said Syme.
   
    Tate brightened a little. His body was too filled with fatigue for his
  mind to do any work on the problem that was baffling him, and so it
  receded into the back of his mind.
   
    "Kal-Jmar," whispered Syme again.
   
    There was no twilight. The sun dropped abruptly behind the low horizon,
  and darkness fell, sudden and absolute. Syme picked up the extra oxygen
  tank and the suitcase, checked his direction by a wrist compass, and
  started toward the hills. Tate rose wearily to his feet and followed
  again.
   
    Two hours later, Kal-Jmar stood before them. They had wormed their
  way past the sentry posts, doing most of the last two hundred meters
  on all fours. With skill and luck, and with Syme's fierce, burning
  determination, they had managed to escape detection—and there they
  were. Journey's end.
   
    Tate stared up at the shining, starlight towers in speechless
  admiration. If the people who had built this city had been decadent,
  still their architecture was magnificent. The city was a rhapsody made
  solid. There was a sense of decay about it, he thought, but it was the
  decay of supreme beauty, caught at the very verge of dissolution and
  preserved for all eternity.
   
    "Well?" demanded Syme.
   
    Tate started, shaken out of his dream. He looked down at the black
  suitcase, a little wonderingly, and then pulled it to him and opened it.
   
    Inside, carefully wrapped in shock-absorbing tissue, was a fragile
  contrivance of many tubes and wires, and a tiny parabolic mirror. It
  had a brand new Elecorp 210 volt battery, and it needed every volt of
  that tremendous power. Tate made the connections, his hands trembling
  slightly, and set it up on a telescoping tripod. Syme watched him
  closely, his big body tensed with expectation.
   
    The field was before them, shimmering faintly in the starlight. It
  looked unsubstantial as the stuff of dreams, but both men knew that no
  power man possessed, unless it was the thing Tate held, could penetrate
  that screen.
   
    Tate set the mechanism up close to the field, aimed it very delicately,
  and closed a minute switch. After a long second, he opened it again.
   
    Nothing happened.
   
    The screen was still there, as unsubstantial and as solid as ever.
  There was no change.
  Tate looked worriedly at his wiring, a deep wrinkle appearing between
  his pale, serious eyes. Syme stood stock-still but quivering with
  repressed energy, scowling like a thundercloud.
   
    "It must be capable of working," Tate told himself querulously. "The
  Martians knew—they wouldn't have tried to stop us if—Wait a minute."
  He paced back and forth, biting his lip. Syme watched him with catlike
  eyes, clenching and unclenching his great fists.
   
    Tate paused. "I think I have it," he said slowly. "I haven't enough
  power to hetrodyne the whole screen, although that's theoretically
  possible. But there must be weaker portions of the field—doors—set
  to open on the impact of a beam like this one. But I've only got power
  enough for two more tries. Jones, where would you put an entrance, if
  you'd built Kal-Jmar?"
   
    Syme's eyes widened, and he stared around slowly. "A thousand years
  ago?" he muttered. "Two thousand? These hills were raised in five
  hundred. We can't go by topography.
   
    "In front of one of the main arteries, then. But there are dozens, no
  one larger than the other. Did they have dozens of doors?"
   
    "Maybe," said Tate. He pointed to the right, where the fairy towers of
  Kal-Jmar swept aside to leave a broad avenue. "It's the nearest—as
  good as any other."
   
    They walked over to it in silence, and in silence Tate set up his
  equipment once more. He shifted it from side to side, squinting, until
  he had it lined up exactly on the center of the avenue. Then he took a
  long breath, and closed the switch again.
   
    The switch came up. Syme stared with fierce eagerness, eyes ablaze. For
  a moment there was nothing, and then—
   
    Tate clutched the big man's arm. "Look!" he breathed.
   
    Where the ray from Tate's machine had impinged, a faintly-glowing
  spot of violet radiance! As they watched it widened, dilating into a
  perfect circle of violet, enclosing nothingness. The door was opening.
   
    "It worked," Tate said softly. "It worked!"
   
    Syme shook off his grip impatiently, put his hand to the gun in the
  holster of his suit. Tate was still watching, fascinated. "Look," he
  said again. "The color is changing slightly, falling down the spectrum.
  I think that's a warning signal. When it reaches red, the door will
  close." He moved toward the widening door, like a sleepwalker.
   
    "Wait," Syme said hoarsely. "You forgot the machine."
   
    Tate turned, said, "Oh yes," and walked back. Then he saw the gun in
  Syme's hand. His jaw dropped slightly, but he didn't say anything. He
  just stood there, looking dumbly from the gun to Syme's dark face.
   
    Syme shot him carefully in the chest.
   
    He dropped like a rag doll, but Syme's aim had been bad. He wasn't dead
  yet. He rolled his eyes up, like a child. His lips moved. In spite of
  himself, Syme bent forward to listen.
   
    "
  You'll be
  —
  sorry
  ," Tate said, and died.
   
    Air was sighing out through the widening hole in the screen. Syme
  straightened and smiled tolerantly. For a moment, he had been
  unreasonably afraid of what Tate was about to say. Some detail he had
  forgotten, perhaps, something that would trap him now that Tate, the
  man who knew the answers, was dead. But—he'd be sorry!
   
    For what? Another dead fool?
   
    He gathered up the delicate mechanism in one arm, and, filling his deep
  lungs, stepped forward through the opening.
  The towers of dead Kal-Jmar loomed over him in the dusk as he strode
  like a conqueror down the long-deserted avenue. The city was full of
  the whisperings of Kal-Jmar's ancient wraiths, but they touched only
  a corner of his mind. He was filled to overflowing with the bright,
  glowing joy of conquest. The city was his!
   
    His boots trod an avenue where no foot had fallen these untold eons,
  yet there was no dust. The city was bright and furbished waiting for
  him. He was intoxicated.
  The city was his!
  There was a gentle ramp leading upward, and Syme followed it, breathing
  in the manufactured air of his pressure suit like wine. All around him,
  the city blazed with treasures beyond price.
  It was his!
  The ramp led to a portal set in the side of a shining needle of a
  building. Syme strode up to the threshold, and the door dilated for
  him. He stepped inside; the door closed and a soft light glowed on.
   
    There was air here: good, breathable air. A tiny zephyr of it was
  blowing from some hidden source against his body. Greatly daring, he
  unfastened the helmet of his suit and flung it back. He breathed in a
  lungful of it. God, but it was good after that canned stuff! It was a
  little heady; it made his head swim—but it was good air, excellent air!
   
    He looked around him, measuring, assessing for the first time. This
  room alone was worth a fortune. There was platinum; in ornaments, set
  into the walls, in furniture. That would be enough to buy the little
  things—a new ship, or perhaps even immunity back on Earth. But that
  was as nothing to the rest of it, the things three worlds would clamor
  for—the artifacts, the record books, the machines!
   
    He strode about the room, building plan on grandiose plan. He could
  take back only a little with him at first; but he could return again
  and again, with Tate's mechanism and new batteries. But he'd explore
  the city thoroughly before he left. Somewhere there must be weapons. An
  invincible weapon, perhaps, that a man could carry in his hand. Perhaps
  even a perfect body screen. With that he wouldn't have to steal away
  from Mars on a freighter, hiding his loot and his greatness in a dingy
  engine room. He could walk into a Triplanet ship and order its captain
  to take him wherever he chose to go!
  He stood then in the middle of the room, arms akimbo, his head swimming
  with glory—and remembered suddenly that he was hungry. He felt in the
  container of his helmet, extracted a couple of food tablets, and popped
  them into his mouth.
   
    They would take care of his needs, but they didn't satisfy his hunger.
  No food tablets for him after this! Steaks, wines, souffles.... His
  mouth began to water at the very thought.
   
    And then the robot rolled on soundless wheels into the room. Syme
  whirled and saw it only when it was almost upon him. The thing was
  remarkably lifelike, and for a moment he was startled.
   
    But it was not alive. It was only a Martian feeding-machine, kept in
  repair all these millennia by other robots. It was not intelligent,
  and so it did not know that its masters would never return. It did not
  know, either, that Syme was not a Martian, or that he wanted a steak,
  and not the distilled liquor of the
  xopa
  fungus, which still grew in
  the subterranean gardens of Kal-Jmar. It was capable only of receiving
  the mental impulse of hunger, and of responding to that impulse.
   
    And so when Syme saw it and opened his mouth in startlement, the
  robot acted as it had done with its degenerate, slothful masters. Its
  flexible feeding tube darted out and half down the man's gullet before
  he could move to avoid it. And down Syme Rector's throat poured a flood
  of
  xopa
  -juice, nectar to Martians, but swift, terrible death to human
  beings....
   
    Outside, the last doorway to Kal-Jmar closed forever, across from the
  cold body of Tate.
  
question_text: Describe the Martians in the story.
response: The Martians have 4 legs and 2 arms. They are telepathic which aids in their communication on a planet with very little atmosphere. It is thought that they speak an immensely complex language and cannot speak to humans. This, however, is a deception on the part of the Martians who can speak to humans perfectly well. The Martians who currently live on the planet have adapted to live on the planet with no atmosphere. Their species' ancient contemporaries sealed themselves in cities like Kal-Jmar instead of adapting. 