The 18th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ™: Jerome Bixby

by Jerome Bixby

  "Is there any possibility," asked Janus, as we walked, "that it could be a natural phenomenon?"

  "There are no straight lines in nature," Randolph said, a little shortly. "That goes for a bunch of circles in a straight line. And for perfect circles, too."

  "A planet is a circle," objected Janus.

  "An oblate spheroid," Allenby corrected.

  "A planet's orbit—"

  "An ellipse."

  Janus walked a few steps, frowning. Then he said, "I remember reading that there is something darned near a perfect circle in nature." He paused a moment. "Potholes." And he looked at me, as mineralogist, to corroborate.

  "What kind of potholes?" I asked cautiously. "Do you mean where part of a limestone deposit has dissol—"

  "No. I once read that when a glacier passes over a hard rock that's lying on some softer rock, it grinds the hard rock down into the softer, and both of them sort of wear down to fit together, and it all ends up with a round hole in the soft rock."

  "Probably neither stone," I told Janus, "would be homogenous. The softer parts would abrade faster in the soft stone. The end result wouldn't be a perfect circle."

  Janus's face fell.

  "Now," I said, "would anyone care to define this term 'perfect circle' we're throwing around so blithely? Because such holes as Janus describes are often pretty damned round."

  Randolph said, "Well...."

  "It is settled, then," Gonzales said, a little sarcastically. "Your discussion, gentlemen, has established that the long, horizontal holes we have found were caused by glacial action."

  "Oh, no," Janus argued seriously. "I once read that Mars never had any glaciers."

  All of us shuddered.

  * * * *

  Half an hour later, we spotted more holes, about a mile down the 'canal,' still on a line, marching along the desert, through cacti, rocks, hills, even through one edge of the low vegetation of the 'canal' for thirty feet or so. It was the damnedest thing to bend down and look straight through all that curling, twisting growth ... a round tunnel from either end.

  We followed the holes for about a mile, to the rim of an enormous saucerlike valley that sank gradually before us until, miles away, it was thousands of feet deep. We stared out across it, wondering about the other side.

  Allenby said determinedly, "We'll burrow to the bottom of these holes, once and for all. Back to the ship, men!"

  We hiked back, climbed in and took off.

  At an altitude of fifty feet, Burton lined the nose of the ship on the most recent line of holes and we flew out over the valley.

  On the other side was a range of hefty hills. The holes went through them. Straight through. We would approach one hill—Burton would manipulate the front viewscreen until we spotted the hole—we would pass over the hill and spot the other end of the hole in the rear screen.

  One hole was two hundred and eighty miles long.

  Four hours later, we were halfway around Mars.

  Randolph was sitting by a side port, chin on one hand, his eyes unbelieving. "All around the planet," he kept repeating. "All around the planet...."

  "Halfway at least," Allenby mused. "And we can assume that it continues in a straight line, through anything and everything that gets in its way...." He gazed out the front port at the uneven blue-green haze of a 'canal' off to our left. "For the love of Heaven, why?"

  Then Allenby fell down. We all did.

  Burton had suddenly slapped at the control board, and the ship braked and sank like a plugged duck. At the last second, Burton propped up the nose with a short burst, the ten-foot wheels hit desert sand and in five hundred yards we had jounced to a stop.

  Allenby got up from the floor. "Why did you do that?" he asked Burton politely, nursing a bruised elbow.

  Burton's nose was almost touching the front port. "Look!" he said, and pointed.

  About two miles away, the Martian village looked like a handful of yellow marbles flung on the desert.

  * * * *

  We checked our guns. We put on our oxygen-masks. We checked our guns again. We got out of the ship and made damned sure the airlock was locked.

  An hour later, we crawled inch by painstaking inch up a high sand dune and poked our heads over the top.

  The Martians were runts—the tallest of them less than five feet tall—and skinny as a pencil. Dried-up and brown, they wore loincloths of woven fiber.

  They stood among the dusty-looking inverted-bowl buildings of their village, and every one of them was looking straight up at us with unblinking brown eyes.

  The six safeties of our six guns clicked off like a rattle of dice. The Martians stood there and gawped.

  "Probably a highly developed sense of hearing in this thin atmosphere," Allenby murmured. "Heard us coming."

  "They thought that landing of Burton's was an earthquake," Randolph grumbled sourly.

  "Marsquake," corrected Janus. One look at the village's scrawny occupants seemed to have convinced him that his life was in no danger.

  Holding the Martians covered, we examined the village from atop the thirty-foot dune.

  The domelike buildings were constructed of something that looked like adobe. No windows—probably built with sandstorms in mind. The doors were about halfway up the sloping sides, and from each door a stone ramp wound down around the house to the ground—again with sandstorms in mind, no doubt, so drifting dunes wouldn't block the entrances.

  The center of the village was a wide street, a long sandy area some thirty feet wide. On either side of it, the houses were scattered at random, as if each Martian had simply hunted for a comfortable place to sit and then built a house around it.

  "Look," whispered Randolph.

  One Martian had stepped from a group situated on the far side of the street from us. He started to cross the street, his round brown eyes on us, his small bare feet plodding sand, and we saw that in addition to a loincloth he wore jewelry—a hammered metal ring, a bracelet on one skinny ankle. The Sun caught a copperish gleam on his bald narrow head, and we saw a band of metal there, just above where his eyebrows should have been.

  "The super-chief," Allenby murmured. "Oh, shaman me!"

  As the bejeweled Martian approached the center of the street, he glanced briefly at the ground at his feet. Then he raised his head, stepped with dignity across the exact center of the street and came on toward us, passing the dusty-looking buildings of his realm and the dusty-looking groups of his subjects.

  He reached the slope of the dune we lay on, paused—and raised small hands over his head, palms toward us.

  "I think," Allenby said, "that an anthropologist would give odds on that gesture meaning peace."

  He stood up, holstered his gun—without buttoning the flap—and raised his own hands over his head. We all did.

  * * * *

  The Martian language consisted of squeaks.

  We made friendly noises, the chief squeaked and pretty soon we were the center of a group of wide-eyed Martians, none of whom made a sound. Evidently no one dared peep while the chief spoke—very likely the most articulate Martians simply squeaked themselves into the job. Allenby, of course, said they just squeaked by.

  He was going through the business of drawing concentric circles in the sand, pointing at the third orbit away from the Sun and thumping his chest. The crowd around us kept growing as more Martians emerged from the dome buildings to see what was going on. Down the winding ramps of the buildings on our side of the wide, sandy street they came—and from the buildings on the other side of the street, plodding through the sand, blinking brown eyes at us, not making a sound.

  Allenby pointed at the third orbit and thumped his chest. The chief squeaked and thumped his own chest and pointed at the copperish band around his head. Then he pointed at Allenby.

  "I seem to have conveyed to him," Allenby said dryly, "the fact that I'm chief of our party. Well, let's try again."

  He started over on the orbits. He didn't seem to be g
etting anyplace, so the rest of us watched the Martians instead. A last handful was straggling across the wide street.

  "Curious," said Gonzales. "Note what happens when they reach the center of the street."

  Each Martian, upon reaching the center of the street, glanced at his feet—just for a moment—without even breaking stride. And then came on.

  "What can they be looking at?" Gonzales wondered.

  "The chief did it too," Burton mused. "Remember when he first came toward us?"

  We all stared intently at the middle of the street. We saw absolutely nothing but sand.

  The Martians milled around us and watched Allenby and his orbits. A Martian child appeared from between two buildings across the street. On six-inch legs, it started across, got halfway, glanced downward—and came on.

  "I don't get it," Burton said. "What in hell are they looking at?"

  The child reached the crowd and squeaked a thin, high note.

  A number of things happened at once.

  * * * *

  Several members of the group around us glanced down, and along the edge of the crowd nearest the center of the street there was a mild stir as individuals drifted off to either side. Quite casually—nothing at all urgent about it. They just moved concertedly to get farther away from the center of the street, not taking their interested gaze off us for one second in the process.

  Even the chief glanced up from Allenby's concentric circles at the child's squeak. And Randolph, who had been fidgeting uncomfortably and paying very little attention to our conversation, decided that he must answer Nature's call. He moved off into the dunes surrounding the village. Or rather, he started to move.

  The moment he set off across the wide street, the little Martian chief was in front of him, brown eyes wide, hands out before him as if to thrust Randolph back.

  Again six safeties clicked. The Martians didn't even blink at the sudden appearance of our guns. Probably the only weapon they recognized was a club, or maybe a rock.

  "What can the matter be?" Randolph said.

  He took another step forward. The chief squeaked and stood his ground. Randolph had to stop or bump into him. Randolph stopped.

  The chief squeaked, looking right into the bore of Randolph's gun.

  "Hold still," Allenby told Randolph, "till we know what's up."

  Allenby made an interrogative sound at the chief. The chief squeaked and pointed at the ground. We looked. He was pointing at his shadow.

  Randolph stirred uncomfortably.

  "Hold still," Allenby warned him, and again he made the questioning sound.

  The chief pointed up the street. Then he pointed down the street. He bent to touch his shadow, thumping it with thin fingers. Then he pointed at the wall of a house nearby.

  We all looked.

  Straight lines had been painted on the curved brick-colored wall, up and down and across, to form many small squares about four inches across. In each square was a bit of squiggly writing, in blackish paint, and a small wooden peg jutting out from the wall.

  Burton said, "Looks like a damn crossword puzzle."

  "Look," said Janus. "In the lower right corner—a metal ring hanging from one of the pegs."

  * * * *

  And that was all we saw on the wall. Hundreds of squares with figures in them—a small peg set in each—and a ring hanging on one of the pegs.

  "You know what?" Allenby said slowly. "I think it's a calendar! Just a second—thirty squares wide by twenty-two high—that's six hundred and sixty. And that bottom line has twenty-six—twenty-seven squares. Six hundred and eighty-seven squares in all. That's how many days there are in the Martian year!"

  He looked thoughtfully at the metal ring. "I'll bet that ring is hanging from the peg in the square that represents today. They must move it along every day, to keep track...."

  "What's a calendar got to do with my crossing the street?" Randolph asked in a pained tone.

  He started to take another step. The chief squeaked as if it were a matter of desperate concern that he make us understand. Randolph stopped again and swore impatiently.

  Allenby made his questioning sound again.

  The chief pointed emphatically at his shadow, then at the communal calendar—and we could see now that he was pointing at the metal ring.

  Burton said slowly, "I think he's trying to tell us that this is today. And such-and-such a time of day. I bet he's using his shadow as a sundial."

  "Perhaps," Allenby granted.

  Randolph said, "If this monkey doesn't let me go in another minute—"

  The chief squeaked, eyes concerned.

  "Stand still," Allenby ordered. "He's trying to warn you of some danger."

  The chief pointed down the street again and, instead of squealing, revealed that there was another sound at his command. He said, "Whooooooosh!"

  We all stared at the end of the street.

  * * * *

  Nothing! Just the wide avenue between the houses, and the high sand dune down at the end of it, from which we had first looked upon the village.

  The chief described a large circle with one hand, sweeping the hand above his head, down to his knees, up again, as fast as he could. He pursed his monkey-lips and said, "Whooooooosh!" And made the circle again.

  A Martian emerged from the door in the side of a house across the avenue and blinked at the Sun, as if he had just awakened. Then he saw what was going on below and blinked again, this time in interest. He made his way down around the winding lamp and started to cross the street.

  About halfway, he paused, eyed the calendar on the house wall, glanced at his shadow. Then he got down on his hands and knees and crawled across the middle of the street. Once past the middle, he rose, walked the rest of the way to join one of the groups and calmly stared at us along with the rest of them.

  "They're all crazy," Randolph said disgustedly. "I'm going to cross that street!"

  "Shut up. So it's a certain time of a certain day," Allenby mused. "And from the way the chief is acting, he's afraid for you to cross the street. And that other one just crawled. By God, do you know what this might tie in with?"

  We were silent for a moment. Then Gonzales said, "Of course!"

  And Burton said, "The holes!"

  "Exactly," said Allenby. "Maybe whatever made—or makes—the holes comes right down the center of the street here. Maybe that's why they built the village this way—to make room for—"

  "For what?" Randolph asked unhappily, shifting his feet.

  "I don't know," Allenby said. He looked thoughtfully at the chief. "That circular motion he made—could he have been describing something that went around and around the planet? Something like—oh, no!" Allenby's eyes glazed. "I wouldn't believe it in a million years."

  His gaze went to the far end of the street, to the high sand dune that rose there. The chief seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

  "I'm going to crawl," Randolph stated. He got to his hands and knees and began to creep across the center of the avenue.

  The chief let him go.

  The sand dune at the end of the street suddenly erupted. A forty-foot spout of dust shot straight out from the sloping side, as if a bullet had emerged. Powdered sand hazed the air, yellowed it almost the full length of the avenue. Grains of sand stung the skin and rattled minutely on the houses.

  WhoooSSSHHHHH!

  Randolph dropped flat on his belly. He didn't have to continue his trip. He had made other arrangements.

  * * * *

  That night in the ship, while we all sat around, still shaking our heads every once in a while, Allenby talked with Earth. He sat there, wearing the headphones, trying to make himself understood above the godawful static.

  "... an exceedingly small body," he repeated wearily to his unbelieving audience, "about four inches in diameter. It travels at a mean distance of four feet above the surface of the planet, at a velocity yet to be calculated. Its unique nature results in many hitherto unobs
erved—I might say even unimagined—phenomena." He stared blankly in front of him for a moment, then delivered the understatement of his life. "The discovery may necessitate a re-examination of many of our basic postulates in the physical sciences."

  The headphones squawked

  Patiently, Allenby assured Earth that he was entirely serious, and reiterated the results of his observations. I suppose that he, an astronomer, was twice as flabbergasted as the rest of us. On the other hand, perhaps he was better equipped to adjust to the evidence.

  "Evidently," he said, "when the body was formed, it traveled at such fantastic velocity as to enable it to—" his voice was almost a whisper—"to punch holes in things."

  The headphones squawked.

  "In rocks," Allenby said, "in mountains, in anything that got in its way. And now the holes form a large portion of its fixed orbit."

  Squawk.

  "Its mass must be on the order of—"

  Squawk.

  "—process of making the holes slowed it, so that now it travels just fast enough—"

  Squawk.

  "—maintain its orbit and penetrate occasional objects such as—"

  Squawk.

  "—and sand dunes—"

  Squawk.

  "My God, I know it's a mathematical monstrosity," Allenby snarled. "I didn't put it there!"

  Squawk.

  Allenby was silent for a moment. Then he said slowly, "A name?"

  Squawk.

  "H'm," said Allenby. "Well, well." He appeared to brighten just a little. "So it's up to me, as leader of the expedition, to name it?"

  Squawk.

  "Well, well," he said.

  That chop-licking tone was in his voice. We'd heard it all too often before. We shuddered, waiting.

  "Inasmuch as Mars' outermost moon is called Deimos, and the next Phobos," he said, "I think I shall name the third moon of Mars—Bottomos."

  THE CROWDED COLONY

  Originally published in Planet Stories, Fall 1950 under the pseudonym “Jay B. Drexel."

  When the Martians had built the village of Kinkaaka, there had been water in the canal, a cool, level sweep of green water from the northern icecap. Now there was none, and Kinkaaka clung to the upper swell of the bank and curved its staggered residential terraces like tragic brows over the long slope of sand and clay, the dead wall baked criss-cross by the sun, that bore at its deep juncture with the opposite bank the pitiful, straggling trench cut by Mars’ last moving waters an untold time ago.