Godson of Almarlu: A Collection of Science Fiction Novellas

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  I remember how it was. We found Marty and Martia wriggling in a puddle at the rim of the north polar icecap of Mars.

  Marty didn’t resist capture very much. In fact he sort of flip-flopped toward us, as if he was curious, or sociable and lonesome. Martia had less romantic adventure in her nature, and more sense. She put up an awful fight for a creature so small, flopping and scrambling out of that puddle of ice-water, and showing real strategy in trying to evade our gloved fingers and to slip into a safe chink in the accumulation of melting hoarfrost. Except for not wanting to desert Marty, she would have gotten clean away.

  But at last we had them both safe in a big pan, with water in it, and a lot of the green algae that thrives in those parts in summertime, and is considered an elegant addition to fine soups on Earth. To make the prison complete, we covered the pan with an algae strainer of wire mesh.

  Mostly, we were jubilant. By “we” I mean Terry Miklas, half Greek and half Irish, twenty years old, then, and musically ambitious: and myself, John Durbin, dubbed Popeye by Terry—which was all right with me, since the original comic character is supposed to have been a good sort with a deep voice. I was the supposed mate of our ship, the Searcher. Mr. Brunder, our captain, still wasn’t present. He had become a bad headache to us both.

  However, for the moment, Terry and I just peered at our captives. Whatever his other limitations, the kid was quick with names. “Poor little things, Popeye,’’ he crooned, “Marty and Martia, the Martian goldfish . . .”

  Muffled by his plastic oxygen helmet and the thin atmosphere of Mars, Terry’s voice sounded even more soft and sentimental.

  The creatures were green with some glints left in it—like fake gold that is giving its phoniness away. Marty was about as long as your hand; Martia, whose sex we guessed by her more retiring nature—a possible error—was a trifle shorter. The green, we know now, was from their being partly vegetable. Nowadays much of the fauna of Mars has to be like that, because of the scarcity of free oxygen in the air, and even, sometimes, dissolved in what water there is. A green plant can draw energy right from the sun, and free its own oxygen.

  You could see Marty’s and Martia’s vital organs right through their tough but semi-transparent hides. Later we learned that much of what we saw was brain-tissue. Two pairs of eyes bulged like black beads. Martia’s little flippers, tipped with claws almost like fingers, tapped appealingly at the side of the pan, while she looked upward at us, and seemed to plead. But Marty just hovered near her, his mouth opening and shutting as his gills worked. Like his mate, he was a dainty, rather beautiful little creature. But now he looked stupid—which, I decided, must be the case—trusting us enough to let us catch him and Martia! Yeah—who was I to know he was only playing dumb?

  “Poor little things!" Terry crooned again. “Dammit all, Popeye—let’s let ’em go . . .”

  Yes, that was the way Terry Miklas was—soft-headed, impractical, ready to give up the opportunity of a lifetime because his heart is hurt a little.

  “Are you nuts?” I growled. "There are guys who claim to have seen these critters scrambling around the Martian icecaps. But nobody ever caught even one, before—though big rewards have been offered. You know how bone-dry most of this crazy planet is! Fishlike critters left alive on it? Only fossils are known . . . Figure if you can what some big, well-financed scientific organization would give . . .’’

  Terry kicked my boot. I turned. Approaching from toward our ship, and glowering behind his whiskers, was our Captain Brunder. Ordinarily he didn’t scare me, even with the awful grouch he’d developed this trip. But now, in a delicate matter which, after all, did have roots of sentiment, he seemed to belong about as well as a howling Martian dust storm over a bed of tender violets.

  I had a helpless impulse to try to hide the pan that Marty and Martia were in. But in that level, featureless country, where only our ample machinery for gathering and processing the algae, stood beside a few wind-worn monoliths and low, dry growths and the vast flatness of the icecap, shallow, and gilded by the small, low sun, except where the few long blue shadows were cast, there just wasn’t any effective place of concealment.

  The kid was edging in front of that pan, and backward toward it. He was trying to hide it from Brunder’s view, of course; but a backward kick of his boot would also overturn it and set our captives free, if he could get a step closer. With all this, I even somehow sort of sympathized, now. But Terry’s grin of innocence was obviously counterfeit. His ineptness in practical matter's included an inability to bluff.

  Now Brunder let go at him with his big mouth. “Stop in your tracks, you mouth-organ tooting, know-nothing gold-brick!” he yelled. “If you weren’t too dense, I'd say you were trying a stunt! Yes, you, Miklas! Who else? For what do I pay you, I wonder? For gabbing and tooting? Get to work, I say! Or by God, I’ll leave you marooned on this stinkin’ planet! . . .”

  Yes, Brunder was mostly just in his usual fine form of this trip—which had been yak, yak, yak at the kid every chance he got. I was not only his mate and half his crew—Terry being the other half, if you discount Brunder’s cat, Toby—I was his lesser partner; which means, I suppose, that I once thought he had good points—not that even later I didn’t want to judge him generously. You see, he’d been chasing money-colored rainbows most of his life, and not ever finding much of the stuff naturally made him sour. Now, toting edible algae to Earth in the battered old Searcher—get the hopeful name?—was a last-ditch deal. I had been bitter, myself.

  Just the same, Brunder got my goat, now. Terry had worked about as well as any green spacehand can. So why ride him? I was as big and ugly as our captain. Now I turned impudent. “Aw—dry up, Brunder!” I growled.

  For a second I thought that he would explode in my face. But then he saw that pan, and the movement inside it. His face showed surprise, then dumb unbelief—then a big Satanic grin. Yeah—Marty and Martia were colored green and gold; and I’ll give you two guesses about what that reminded Mr. Brunder of.

  “Well, well, well, boys!” he growled, his tone all honey and alum, mixed. “Look what was here all the time, though you never noticed! Your old Captain Brunder will just reap the proper rewards of his sole discovery, and you two thieving chiselers can go gabbling on!”

  He had the pan in his big mitts, and was marching grandly back toward the ship’s airlock.

  At first I was ready to pile onto him, myself. And for once the kid’s narrow face went all crinkled and thundery, and his fists balled, though he was slight in build.

  “Steady, Terry,” I said. “I’ve just come to realize. He’s trying to rib us. He’d like to cheat us, but he can’t. There are laws that work. I’ll handle him, when the time comes.”

  Marty and Martia got a place in the captain’s cabin, with a nice sunlamp, turned comfortably low, glowing over them. Mr. Brunder made Terry Miklas help him rig up this special comfort, while I and Toby—the big tomcat who was Brunder’s one concession to affection—watched. Toby was a lot like Brunder, even—big-jowled, whiskery, cussed, and somewhat pompous.

  “We’ve got to be properly hospitable to my distinguished guests, Pisces Martis,” Brunder, who liked scientific language, pronounced, meaning to taunt Terry and me. “But don’t think, Durbin and Miklas, that we aren’t going to finish taking on a cargo of algae. Don’t think it for a minute!”

  Toby, afflicted by covetous anticipation of his own, rubbed his flanks against me, purring. But Brunder had words for him, too.

  “As for you, you devil,” he growled, “you bunk out of my quarters tonight! Get fresh, and I’ll put you clear outside the ship—without your air-helmet on! . . ."

  Yes—Brunder had one of those things for his cat—same as a lady tourist, visiting a domed Terran settlement on Mars, has for her pet poodle. Quite a character that Brunder was.

  But we were all in on something much bigger than we knew.

  Later, while Terry and I were out straining algae again, and pressing it into b
locks, maybe we got a closer understanding of our true position.

  “Popeye,” Terry said musingly. “I’m thinking, and I’m sort of scared. What have we got on our hands, anyway? Oh, Marty and Martia are real enough, but somehow they remind me of things like elves and fairies, and the treasure in Aladdin’s cave . . . Get it?—almost the same mood, somehow—Sweet-and-Strange and What-Do-We-Know? I like that a lot, but it bothers me . . . The real man-sized Martians that weren’t men had wonderful skills and sciences, but have been extinct for millions of years . . . And little fishlike creatures would have to be pretty smart to survive so long on Mars, wouldn’t they?”

  “Uhuh,” I agreed absently, feeling a little cold, too, with pendant mystery—apart, even, from the old wind and dust-scarred ruins that I’d seen brooding under the deep blue sky.

  Life went on, nothing very obvious happening at first. At off-moments Terry would play his harmonica or guitar. Old tunes, mostly. I didn’t understand so well what a youngster interested in music wanted in space. But Terry tried to explain: “It’s strange grandeur, stars, weird difference of scene, and a need to keep looking for something special to express, Popeye . . .”

  From that kind of jumping-off point, Terry would get onto another inevitable subject, if Brunder didn’t interrupt. In the quarters I shared with him, I had the picture of a girl; blonde, as pretty as a flower, as mischievous as an imp, and as unlike me as new metal is unlike rust, though they tell me that the eyes are much the same. Sure—Alice always wished that she had been born a boy so that she could go right off into space with her old man, instead of studying in college.

  “Nope—you’re not so prejudiced in her favor, Popeye,” the kid would assure me. “She sure looks wonderful. I hope I’ll meet her, sometime, or at least get a letter . . .”

  Soon after, I’d go to sleep in my bunk, and I’d dream—with vague unrest—of the kind of little Earthly fish that can creep out on the shore for awhile, or of mice scrambling around and squeaking. This, when there haven’t been mice in spaceships for a long time, not even in the old Searcher—no thanks here to Toby, but to the simple trick, easily and early discovered, of letting the air out of the hulls—or letting in the killing vacuum of space—for a few minutes, periodically.

  Those dreams of mine—garbled echoes of what was really happening, shall we say?—were only the beginning. Because very soon Mr. Brunder had a complaint.

  “What I’d like to know,” he growled at breakfast one morning, “is who has been putting string and wire and junk in the water with my Pisces Martis? It looks like the trick of an uninstructed child.”

  “Why—Sir—wire? String? Junk?” Terry asked in obvious puzzlement.

  “You heard me,” Brunder stated flatly. “For your information, I’ll keep my cabin locked from now on.”

  Until then, Terry missed even the implied accusation, which included intrusion on a captain’s privacy. But now something flared up in his eyes, until I had to touch his arm once more, in warning. He sure liked Marty and Martia, and neither of us had looked upon them once—as far as I knew—since they had been installed in Brunder’s quarters.

  “Something must be up, Terry,” I said later, when we were outside, alone.

  “I know,” he answered almost gleefully, now. “Mr. Brunder doesn’t realize it, but his Pisces Martis have been out of that pan—out from under the strainer that covers it, and back in again—after scrounging around for things they want!”

  I felt a small chill, again. But after a moment I said, "That sounds innocent enough, Terry. What do you expect Marty and Martia to do? Build up some weird super-apparatus from odds and ends? Demonstrate strange, miraculous powers? They may be humanly intelligent, or even better than that. But they don’t seem the kind to bother with a complicated civilization and science.”

  Terry thought that over. “Those things I didn’t even think of, Popeye,” he chuckled at last. “But some powers may be very simple, and may depend only on a difference—like being little and mysterious, and rather legendary, for instance. Take some historic diamond, for example . . .”

  Well, we got the Searcher fully loaded with algae that day, and the hatches secured. That day even Brunder worked hard. The Pisces Martis surely had a power over him. It was as if he had the crown jewels of some lost empire in his pocket. Maybe I sort of felt the same, because this was my deal, too, and Terry’s, whether Brunder tried to make it seem different or not.

  We spent our last night on Mars. Tired though he was, Terry had to lie on his bunk, doodling with his mouth-organ for awhile, before going to sleep. Because we were about to blast off for Earth, he played Home Sweet Home through a few times, softly. Yes, it’s an old, old tune, and sentimental. Sometimes I'd say it was corny. After awhile I fell asleep.

  I awoke at an indefinite time later with Terry gripping my shoulder in the dark, and whispering tensely: "Shhhh! Listen!”

  Yes—I heard it. It was like a tiny xylophone playing—faintly, as if far off, though it must be nearby. There, unmistakable, were the opening bars of Home Sweet Home. But then the shift was smooth to some other kind of music, which I was sure no men had ever heard before . . . Because its movement and tone—everything about it—was swift and different, and outside of human art, somehow, though it kept its appeal. I was still half asleep, though fighting for full consciousness. But maybe this condition sharpened the music’s power for me. It tinkled and soared and reached out.

  I thought of the Mars of ages past, a younger, populous, more verdant planet, whose people were not extinct through war, but at the height of their glory. And maybe I thought of little lesser beings, idling ornamentally, deep in a pool of a palace garden, perhaps . . . Yeah, sentimental the visions got, even for me, John (Popeye) Durbin . . . And then in a questioning ripple of elfin notes, the music died away, and didn’t return again, though Terry and I waited for several minutes.

  The kid’s fingers had never left my shoulder. Now they dug deeper into my muscles. “Was that sort of thing—somehow—from—Marty and Martia?’’ he grated thickly. “Sure . . . It’s got to be! . . . But how—with what means? . . . And—is that the way they are, Popeye? Musical? And did they ever hear me play—somehow—before they came to us? That is, were they—drawn? . . . Of course! Remember? A few times I was blowing my smallest harmonica—holding it in my mouth—inside my oxygen helmet, and outside the ship, while we were processing algae! That’s it! They heard me, then! . . . Afterwards, they came . . . And now, they must have been making their music right here in our quarters, Popeye! They’re out of that pan in Brunder’s room again! They’re here—someplace! Come on! Got to hunt! Got to find out more! . . .”

  Terry Miklas, with the lore of Olympus and of the leprechauns of Ireland in his background, was all steamed up. Nor could I blame him. For between himself and two little creatures of Mars he had found a thing of solid kinship. Music.

  He bounced out of his bunk, and proceeded to fairly take our quarters apart. With less vigor, I helped. But except for small openings in the bulkheads, where various pipes and conduits ran, we found nothing. Marty and Martia, one or the other or both—in their nocturnal and amphibious prowling—had departed.

  To me was left the tough job of quieting Terry’s impatience and frustration, and his just curses against Mr. Brunder for keeping the Pisces Martis away from us, in his own cabin.

  “Simmer down, fella, and keep the peace,” I growled. “A little while, more or less, won’t matter. You’ll learn all you want to know, and things’ll straighten out. Likely as not, our musicians in miniature will come back here themselves. Now let’s get some sleep!"

  Terry looked angry for a second; then grinned sheepishly.

  ‘‘Sorry,’’ he muttered. “And thanks.”

  At dawn we blasted off heavily from Mars. Small pinwheel jets started the ring-like hull of the Searcher rotating, to give us the comfort of an artificial gravity, induced by centrifugal force.

  Ship-time, split into three watc
hes, now took the place of natural, planetary night and day. Over two months it would take to reach Earth—an interval in which much promised to happen, for much already was queer.

  Events went on occurring after we got into space, though many of them not visibly. During Brunder’s intervals of duty, or while he was asleep, there were apt to be more sounds as of mice scampering in the hidden byways of the ship, too narrow for human passage—a laugh on Brunder, for these were signs of the free rambling of small characters, basically aquatic but native to Mars, and hence, by necessity, not too bound to their proper element. In fact, the rich Earthly air of the Searcher, some of the oxygen of which their gills and skins must have been able to absorb, must have extended their out-of-water range considerably.

  Maybe Brunder knew all this. Anyway, his door stayed locked. But I’d known him quite awhile—good and bad—and I could read the old robber pretty good, even when he tried to clam up. I could also taunt him. Captain—hell! He was my partner, and he was way out of line! Clubbing him would have borne us quicker fruit, but taunting was more peaceful and more fun, and it could get results.

  “Today even your whiskers look joyful, Brunder,’’ I laughed once. “Have you learned something about Pisces Martis—so-called by you—that makes you imagine that they are worth an even bigger bundle of money than you supposed in your first delusions of grandeur?’’

  Then, just hours later, I had another dig, also with probable grains of truth behind it: “What’s the matter, Old Pal? You look mixed up and angry—even down-right scared. Have these mysterious creatures, which of course were found by and belong to the kid and me, revealed qualities to you there in the secrecy of your lair, which makes you suspect that they’re more than you can handle? Still you want to keep them all to yourself, eh—Whole Hog? I wonder if we’ll find you gruesomely murdered? Maybe you should lock yourself in your cabin, alone, Brunder . . .”