The explorer crew waited at the ship's rocket launchers for an attack. The tail of the teardrop housed the built-in armament—the rocket tubes which could send forth destruction to an enemy. But though Haines sat with his finger on the launcher button, no aircraft rose to meet them from the city below. No guns barked at them. No panic started in the streets.
They could see tiny dots of living beings moving about, but no sign of alarm, no evidence that they had been noticed.
Even here, at the equator, there were streaks of white snow in the streets and rings of rime along the bases of the buildings.
Directly below them lay the Sun-tap station. The lines converged here, and the rings of distortion could be seen in the atmosphere, causing the city to flicker as if from the presence of invisible waves.
Then they saw the masts and their shining accumulators projecting about a cleared spot near the outskirts of the city. The customary walled ring and the open machinery were not visible.
"The Sun-tap station is under the city!" said Lockhart, shocked. "It's been built beneath the streets somewhere, and the Martians walk around above it and let the masts alone! They must be the builders!"
"If so, why are they killing themselves?" Burl couldn't see the sense of it. "And if they have reasons, then why don't they defend it? They were alerted while we were on Mercury. They must have spaceships if they are the enemy. Where are they?"
The ground was now but a few hundred feet below them, and still no one paid the strange ship hanging in the sky any attention. While the crew stood with bated breath, Lockhart brought the ship down and down, until it came to rest barely fifty feet above an intersection. There it hung, nearly touching the roofs, and was ignored.
The shining masts of the Sun-tap station continued to gleam, following the tiny bright Sun in its course through the dark blue of the sky. One of the two small Martian moons was climbing upward along the horizon. The canals beyond were dark lines of conduit, through which no life-giving waters flowed. And the Martians did nothing.