Machine of KLAMUGRA

By Allen K. Lang

Captain Barnaby and Lieutenant Teajun stood at the brink of that vast stone amphitheater, staring wonderingly down at half-an-acre of gadget. This glittering mass of million-year clockwork was the Machine ... and soon it was to judge them for their crime against Mars!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories November 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Klaggchallak, his fur nose-flaps pulled tight against his nostrils, stumbled up to the gleaming pinnacle of steel that seemed to offer shelter against the night. He felt a dust-storm gathering in the west, and knew that not even the tough skin of a Martian priest could withstand the angry whippings of sand lashed up by the wind-warlocks of the desert.

The old priest drew a tiny, folded mal-skin tent from his back-pack. Without haste, for he knew that the elder gods of Mars were watching his safety, Klaggchallak pitched the tent against the west stabilizer of the rocket, drawing the tough hide down to form a floor-flap and fastening it to the steel of the stabilizer with tough mal-hoof glue, which would hold fast in the fiercest winds of Mars. He looked for the sun and found it low in the evening sky, then crawled leisurely into the yurt, pulling the door-flap down after him and gluing it to the floor. He had for himself a secure cocoon into which the sand-devils could not force their probing fingers. Before he slept, the old priest fingered his beads, reciting his evening invocation to various benevolent and protective gods.

The falling sun threw a dancing star against the hull of the ship standing tall in its tail-chocks. A bewildering wail, the banshee-call of "Danger; ship jetting off!" sounded; but Klaggchallak slept on, hearing through his dreams only the howling of the wind.

Sixty seconds later, as prescribed in the General Regulations of the Extraterrestrial Service, a second sound began, that most fearful of noises, the sirening of the rocket exhaust. The Martian in his skin tent wakened and felt fear gnaw at his bones; fear induced by subsonic tremors from the rocket blast. Klaggchallak reached for his beads as the heat soaked into his thick, wrinkled skin.

In a moment the floor sagged beneath him. With the mal-skin pouch dangling ridiculously from its tail assembly, the 

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