by Earl
But one night it happened. In a trice the man, awaiting just this occurrence, had hooked up the big set, although his hands trembled so, he dropped the earphones twice. His astonishment may be imagined when he heard, instead of signals, a voice! True, a strange and muffled voice, but nevertheless they were articulations of a rational being. It is possible that the man ecstatically drank in the triumph of first hearing of all living and of all dead peoples the voice of a Martian. In breathless suspense, we may imagine him, listening spellbound to a language he could not in the least understand, momentarily disconnected with things material, and experiencing a sublime emotion, that of being first to do something!
His diary is especially illuminating at this point: “voice that soothes and lulls, at least to me. Curiously rapid, and unhesitatingly, as if it took little effort to formulate. Few harsh sounds and many graduated vowel combinations came. I am the first human to hear the voice of a being not of the earth! Glorious triumph! I am now amply rewarded for my recluse life. And it took no physical prowess. God, how I hate the thought——Despised and scorned, health undermined——But this is ample reward. I could ask no more. Am I to become famous? Nothing I desire more—or less. I’ll meet him face to face——”
I may add that he struck the right expression when he said: “Rapid and unhesitating as if it took little effort to formulate.” That is the outstanding characteristic of the spoken Martian language.
In the days following, he listened to what were evidently long talks or reports, to which he could not hear the answers, for which the speaker stopped at times. As he listened, night after night, and the voice grew louder and louder, it gradually dawned upon him that the Martian was somehow in motion and gradually nearing the earth!
In a daze, the man sat almost continuously by the receiver till a report would be ended, then most likely he worked on his great work, in the pauses between the messages. As soon as the light flashed, however, he was back at the set and indulging again in the “soothing and lulling” modulations of the Pioneer. It never occurred to him or perhaps he didn’t want to do that, to notify the scientists at the Ironwood Public-Service Laboratory, but it did occur to him to speak to the Martian. He hooked up the set of his invention and switched on the current. No one knows what he said but probably they were impassioned words of cheer and welcome, and the effect on the Martian, again from the diary, is given here:
“His voice became eager, his words more rapid; and although we had no way of understanding each other, I verily believe something in common in our thoughts gave him hope and comfort and me——! Later, when he spoke again, to whomever on Mars was in contact with him, I could almost follow his eager explanations about me——”
This, the writer thinks, explains the comparatively slight excitement, when the Martians asked, who had attempted to communicate with the Martian, Kastory Impan, during his flight to earth. No one had accomplished such an inconceivable thing as far as anyone knew, the Martians were assured, but they maintained, with their usual persistency, that someone on our earth had spoken to him while he was yet in mid-space and from then till his fatal landing.
Affairs came to a climax. Some fate, some working of destiny, pointed the ship of the First Martian in his epochal-making flight to the town of Bessemer near the shores of Lake Superior and very near to the home of the eccentric radio-enthusiast.
The signals had become extraordinarily loud and the man basked in delightful thoughts of meeting him. He sat by his set that memorable afternoon of August, 1978, and heard the voice of the Martian becoming excited! Suddenly his words ceased! There was a long and deathly silence, in which the only man cognizant of the Martian’s arrival was gripped in a mighty and terrible dread. My very heart stopped beating as I hoped and prayed for the Martian.” Then came a grinding sound, a fearful scream, a dull crash, and then—dead silence!
We have no record of Gregory Stewart’s immediate reactions to what he knew probably meant death to the First Martian. Perhaps he fainted. Anyway, the call, his call, to the Ironwood Laboratory came a full hour after the landing. The words of the unknown man who apprized the scientists of the arrival are indelibly printed in the mind of the operator at the set in the laboratory, who heard in a tense, almost unearthly, strained voiced the following:
“In God’s name, hurry over to First Bluff near Bessemer where a Martian has just landed and is probably—badly—hurt!”
It is easily seen that Gregory Stewart had heard the report of the motorcop in his low-wave set and so knew that fate had landed the Martian very near to the only human who knew of his coming!
Thus it was that when the scientists and utilities crew arrived and carried out the body of Kastory Impan, The Pioneer, The First Martian, there was a small dark man, a glazed look in his weary eyes, who hovered in the background and looked intently at the distorted face of the Martian.
Kastory Impan
THE door was cut out, as was the only possible way, with a hydrotorch, and the piece was lifted away. The head of the utilities crew stepped into the globe. He came out with an expression of bewilderment, and turning to the group of five scientists who had sped over to investigate the truth of the mysterious call, said he believed they were the ones to enter and bring out the person inside.
Let us read the abridged report of this group of men who were first to look upon the face of the First Martian:
“Our universal-power flashlights lit up the interior of the globe suffused by a greenish glow from the reflection of things made of a certain metal (an alloy known later as Martinium). The first object to engage our attention was the body of the First Martian to arrive on this earth. Perhaps four feet long, with massive chest and spindly legs, the Pioneer lay stretched out, on his thin and wasted face a most frantic look of despair and fear. His fingers were clutched together and his legs terribly twisted. A general angular look about the body suggested that all his bones were broken. Carefully we laid aside the yielding broken body and proceeded to examine the interior of the ship. The interior walls were covered by a netting of fine wire, whose purpose was to provide heat, obtained from electrical energy from a radioactive battery. Among the articles in the ship was a heavy, metal box, securely attached to the floor-wall, which housed the atomic-energy engine; another, similarappearing box nearby was ajar and inside were jars of a peculiar, practically unbreakable glass, some of them containing crust-like substances and others water, an oily liquid and miscellaneous articles. Fastened securely to the walls all around were various instruments of delicate and fine make easily recognized as thermometer, clock, telescope, sextant-like affair, an acceleration and speed recorder, altimeter, and several seemingly purposeless instruments. All seemed to have survived the shock of the impact quite well.
“Near the body was an apparent radio-set, mangled beyond readjustment and about the only object in the ship in that condition. It was connected by a thin wire to a metallic rod supported on a wooden base, which evidently was the aerial. We also observed a television attachment and the reflecting mirror fastened to the wall. In the space between the outer and inner wall was the compressed air tank which supplied the pilot with pure air, and an outlet with an ingenious valve for eliminating used air. In six different places, equidistant from each other, were shutter-like arrangements. Raising one of them we looked right through the outer wall into the woods around First Bluff! Truly, a marvelous metal of which the ship was built!
“The body lay half across the radio-set as we found it. Our inspection done, the body was reverently carried outside to the eager people and the ship was closed up and guarded till taken away the next day.”
The body of Kastory Impan lies in state, in contrast to the look of anguish on his face, in the Bessemer Museum, and is a shrine at which thousands daily worship—and pray.
The Martians, we learned later, knew absolutely nothing about the flight of the Pioneer. He and his friend had built the ship, devised the engine (the crude forerunner of the atomic-engine) a
nd fitted it for spaceflight. Constant communication was kept up between the two during all the flight, and the full story of particulars was published by the Martian who stayed behind. It is therein stated that the reason for his failure to land successfully was due to the crudeness and incompleteness of the engine. For fuel, the Martian had used gold, a fairly common metal on Mars, which yields a high percentage of hydrogen volume when broken up by actinium. The ship had landed squarely on its rocket-tube discharge (which they had built almost flush with the outer shell). Around the discharge tube had been placed the weighting material, gold, to keep the tube always pointing to the planet above which the ship hovered. It is suggested that the Martian and his companion had not made enough allowance for the earth’s superior gravity and hence had not enough discharge-force to land the ship gently.
Two Worlds
“SECOND Martian Ship Arrived!” read the startling headlines of newspapers. September 21, 1981. What had happened to Dr. Svens’, to our ship? the Tellurian f Had they passed each other on the way? Had the Tellurian been disabled or lost or smashed into infinity? The turmoil reached proportions almost transcending the Space-Ship Period, when everyone had become inspired with the desire to reach Mars.
The ten Martians who came as official pioneers to earth, knew nothing of our ship. They started, in fact, on exactly the same day the Tellurian left earth! If the dead body of the Pioneer, Kastory Impan, had been ogle-eyed and stared at by millions, imagine the center of attraction ten live, moving, and talking Martians must have been! Their ship had arrived in Europia, in the former country of Belgium, near Antwerp. The International Science Group of Paris immediately traveled thither en masse and accorded the Martians welcome. I will not detail the activities of the Martians and our scientists but suffice it that the visit lasted a full six months, in which time, by using joint telepathy and simple teaching methods, the Martians were taught English, which was the universal language on Earth.
In the meantime, the Tellurian came back from Mars, and the success of their voyage caused every world citizen to expand his chest and look mightily pleased. The two ships were a strange contrast side by side: the large, green-hued globular ship from Mars, made of Martinium, and the smaller, elongated, bright silver earthship. Both had the identical type of engine, but each was run by different fuels. The Martians were run by large amounts of actinium and gold, while ours was run by small amounts of the Wonder Metal and lead.
After the two successful flights in 1981, space travel became but a matter of development and enterprise. The Martians soon brought us their science, in many ways superior to ours, their television, which was superior to ours, their persistence, and lastly, Martinium, able to resist heat and cold to all extremes. The Earth returned with her imbeciles and invalids, headed for the mountains of Mars, the best sanitariums of the two worlds. As trade became established, vast stores of radioactive minerals, gold, lead and tin, were exported to earth, the last two vying on the market with synthetic lead and tin, successfully developed by Professor Riehm, famous for all times as the originator of transmutation. In turn, the Martians imported sodium salts, of which they suffered an extreme rarity, sulphur, and iron. At first, considerable numbers of the space freight-ships were lost, some with valuable consignments, due to insufficient fuel or lack of practical data on space travel, but today, losses are down to a bare minimum. And the brains of the two worlds have worked in unison to solve baffling problems. Only once has trouble loomed on the horizon of our friendly relationship.
In closing, let us read a clipping from a newspaper dated August 3, 1978.
“Today, a small, dark man, Gregory Stewart, known to the people of Bessemer as a radio-amateur, and having a laboratory there, startled the people in Setter’s Park by rushing straight to the waters of the lagoon. He shouted as he ran: “Ah! God! I hear it again!
He screams, oh!—he screams! He’s lost!” and holding his hands to his ears, he plunged to his death in the pond. Although he was pulled out quickly, he could not be revived.
This little article was hidden in the middle of the newspaper. Yet almost all the rest of it dealt with the arrival of the FIRST MARTIAN.
THE END
[*] Actinium itself produces no radiation of any kind, but it suffers continual inter-protonic rearrangement, constantly forming actinium A (isotope of polonium) which immediately breaks down into actinium B (isotope of lead) which gives off very powerful gamma rays.
1933
THE MOON MINES
l This author introduces himself to the readers of Wonder Stories with a smoothly flowing, exciting, and yet surprising tale of adventure on the dead surface of the moon.
Mr. Binder has captured the essence of an interplanetary tale—that the action shall depend upon the peculiar conditions of the locale chosen. So many authors write interplanetary tales that could just as well have happened in New York, or Montana or Central America. Mr. Binder’s tale is a moon story, par excellence.
Trickery must be met with trickery, shrewdness with shrewdness, in the desperate games men will play with life and death on other worlds. These elements make this story a series of thrilling surprises from beginning to end.
l With a careless flip of his hand, Richard Harrington snapped the button of the visovox and aimlessly turned the central dial. Music, laughter, news items, and other entertainment were momentarily listened to, and then angrily forsaken. After much of such critical searching for something that suited him in his present mood, he finally brought forth from the ether the strains of a low viol, playing one of Victor Herbert’s time-hallowed love songs.
His eyes lit up with pleasure and he snapped the button which controlled the visual circuit of the visovox. He could distinguish little on the screen till he turned out the lights in the room. Then, as distinctly as if he were present in person, the figure of the violinist appeared in the frame and played to soothe the moodiness of Richard. Well satisfied for the moment, the latter threw himself into a cushioned chair and settled himself comfortably. In five more minutes he had arisen, turned on the lights, snapped off the visovox petulantly, and stormed about the room.
“What in the name of the ten planets is the matter with me? I’ve got plenty of Credits[1], am well fed, healthy, well established, have friends, and yet I can’t seem to enjoy myself as other people. . . . I guess the L.W. tests[2] are right, all right. Restless nature, content only in times of danger, incapable of being geared into a clock-work life, posessed of a will of my own. . . . that’s what they said about me. . . . I’ve got it! . . . I’ve got that urge again. . . . something is pushing inside of me. . . . I need change, action, hazard. . . .”
Richard Harrington was, although shorter than the average man, a good deal stockier than most. His broad back was most fittingly coupled with slender hips. His legs were well formed and sturdy. To the stranger, the first glance at his face gives an impression of stupidity. A second and closer glance reveals the shrewdness that lurks beneath the mask of stupidity. Large blue eyes were set beneath a broad forehead. There was a certain slowness in his gait and general behavior that covered up a natural ability to move very fast and surely when occasion demanded. A remarkable physical and mental control made of the man a forceful, not easily subdued character.
Harrington was far from serene and calm as he paced the parlor of his suite of rooms. The L.W. tests had revealed him as the typical adventurer. The socialistic government had placed him in the paths most suited to his temperament. That was ten years before.
Curse these S.I.S.[3] officials,” he grumbled to himself. “They can’t find enough for me to do. I haven’t been on a commission for all of . . . let me see . . . two weeks now!”
It was really hard to fit a man of this type in the systematic social world of his century. The socialistic doctrine demanded that every soul do his share for the common good of all. The ordinary run of people were easily slipped into place by the intelligenMeaders in the central government. Each had a natural bent,
revealed by the infallible L.W. tests, and his future life was governed by the revelations of those tests.
But with some few, of which Richard Harrington was a notable example, there was trouble in adapting them in any line of endeavor. A six-hour working day, and a four-day week was almost the ideal existence for most citizens of the United Socialistic Republic, but to this man it would have meant the extinction of the best in him. His temperament could not be bound by such monotonous routine. He had imagination to a certain degree, mental dexterity of high quality, personality to a high degree, but counterbalanced by a terrific dislike for restraint of any sort.
There is hardly any doubt that if he had lived many centuries before, when there was no Bureau of Employment, he would have become a pirate; or, living in a later age, a gentleman outlaw. As it was, they made him one of the highly-honored S.I.S., and thus directed his independence to safe and beneficent efforts for the common weal.
His last thought, about the commission of such ancient vintage as two weeks, brought before his mind some of the events in the execution of his duty.
“So the Ginzies[4] thought they could short-weight us by their faked eighty-eight standards? Thought an earthman couldn’t understand their system, although it is as complicated as those whirly-brained fur-faces can make it. I had a great old time there holding up a shipment for two days while half the Ginzies in the place looked ready to murder me!”
