Delar av din beskrivning speglar vagt på "City" (aka "Purpose" ), en kort historia av Ray Bradbury , som ursprungligen publicerades på Startling Stories , juli 1950 (tillgänglig på Internetarkiv ), vilket var svaret på de gamla frågorna Människan snubblar över antika boobys fällor och Kort berättelse om astronauter som besöker en planet för första gången som luktar och smakar dem och Bok eller novell om en tom stad med dödliga fällor .
Vad matchar: Det är en gammal historia av Ray Bradbury om en dödlig gammal stad. En medlem av festen, kaptenen, är skild från de andra; Han är den första som dödades, och hans öde beskrivs i detalj:
A final test. The city, having listened, watched, tasted, felt, weighed, and balanced, must perform a final test.
A trap flung wide in the street. The captain, unseen to the others, running, vanished.
Hung by his feet, a razor drawn across his throat, another down his chest, his carcass instantly emptied of its entrails, exposed upon a table under the street, in a hidden cell, the captain died. Great crystal microscopes stared at the red twines of muscle; bodiless fingers probed the still pulsing heart. The flaps of his sliced skin were pinned to the table while hands shifted parts of his body like a quick and curious player of chess, using the red pawns and the red pieces.
Vad som inte matchar: Allt annat.
1. Staden var inte på Mars, den var på en extra solplan:
The city waited with its windows and its black obsidian walls and its sky towers and its unpennanted turrets, with its untrod streets and its untouched doorknobs, with not a scrap of paper or a fingerprint upon it. The city waited while the planet arced in space, following its orbit about a blue-white sun, and the seasons passed from ice to fire and back to ice and then to green fields and yellow summer meadows.
It was on a summer afternoon in the middle of the twenty-thousandth year that the city ceased waiting.
In the sky a rocket appeared.
2. Utforskningspartiet är nio astronauter, inga turister:
The rocket soared over, turned, came back, and landed in the shale meadow fifty yards from the obsidian wall.
There were booted footsteps in the thin grass and calling voices from men within the rocket to men without.
"Ready?"
"All right, men. Careful! Into the city. Jensen, you and Hutchinson patrol ahead. Keep a sharp eye."
3. Det finns inga överlevande. De nio astronauternas död kroppar leder tillbaka till jorden, kontrolleras av utländska maskiner:
The incisions on their necks were invisible, as were their hidden brass hearts and silver organs and the fine golden wire of their nerves. Their was a faint electric hum from their heads.
"On the double!"
Nine men hurried the golden bombs of disease culture into the rocket.
"These are to be dropped on Earth."
"Right, sir!"
The rocket valve slammed.
The rocket jumped into the sky.
As the thunder faded, the city lay upon the summer meadow. Its glass eyes were dulled over. The Ear relaxed, the great nostril vents stopped, the streets no longer weighed or balanced, and the hidden machinery paused in its bath of oil.
In the sky the rocket dwindled.
Slowly, pleasurably, the city enjoyed the luxury of dying.