Freddy and the Space Ship

by Walter R. Brooks

  Uncle Ben nodded agreement. “Claim it first,” he said. “Put up flag.”

  “That’s right,” said Jinx. “We ought to take possession of Mars for the United States. Boy, won’t that be something? I bet it’ll make old What’s-his-name look sick—Columbus. Golly, he just discovered half a world; we discovered a whole one.”

  “We’ve got to try to rescue Charles first, though,” Freddy said. “I don’t think they’ve eaten him. If they’ve never seen a rooster before they wouldn’t know whether he was good to eat or not.”

  “Cook him right in that suit,” said Mrs. Peppercorn—“that’s what I’ll tell ’em to do if I see them. Make him nice and tender, even a tough old chicken like him.”

  “Don’t ever call him a chicken,” said Freddy. “It makes him mad.—But come on, let’s get these Big Bangs in position.”

  Georgie reported that the Martians had not come close to the ship; they were hiding among the black spikes mostly to the south and the east of it. Though they had apparently posted sentinels in a circle around it.

  “Like men?” Uncle Ben asked.

  “Well, some of them have got two legs,” said Georgie, “and some four or five. They’re very—well, they seem to be all sizes. Haven’t seen that little thing with the yellow shoes anywhere.”

  For the next few hours they lay concealed in a fold of the ground not far from the ship. It seemed as if it would never get dark, but at last it did. They set the Big Bangs to go off all together in ten minutes, put them in a line facing the ship about five yards apart, and then hurriedly circled around to the south side and waited.

  The plan worked perfectly. The clocks exploded their first firecrackers in a sort of irregular volley. In two minutes came the second ripple of fire, louder this time, as if the attackers were coming closer. But it wasn’t until the third firecrackers went off that the Martians began to reply. They had weapons of some kind, which flashed and banged very much like earthly shotguns, and two or three small searchlights were turned on to hunt for the source of the firing.

  Of course they didn’t find it, and when the alarm clocks had all shot off their third firecracker and were silent for two minutes, the Martians stopped shooting too.

  “If they don’t charge the Bangs, or else turn and run, we won’t be able to get back to the ship,” Jinx said.

  “If they’re anything like us,” Freddy said, “they’ll have to do one or the other. Their nerves won’t let ’em stand still when they’re being attacked by enemies that keep coming closer and closer, and still they can’t see them. Wait till the last bang.”

  But the, Martians had better nerves than Freddy had thought. They replied to the fourth volley, and after it, continued to search with the beams of their spotlights. Luckily for the explorers, just as the fifth and final round of firecrackers were ready to explode, one of the alarm clocks was spotted, and held in the beam of one of the lights.

  “Hey, look!” Jinx exclaimed. “Boy, that ought to give those Martians the wigglies! Look, they’re turning all their spots on it! Golly they’re looking for a bunch of snipers sneaking up, and all there is is one little lone alarm clock moving in on ’em.”

  And at that moment the clock blew up. Bang! went the fifth firecracker, and the bits of glass and tin and little brass wheels glittered in the light as they went whizzing off in all directions. And bang, bang bang!—the other Big Bangs began firing their final shots.

  The other Big Bangs began firing their final shots.

  This was too much for the Martians. The spotlights went out, but before they did Freddy could see dark figures break from cover and run. They ran past the ship and when he turned on his outside microphone to listen, he heard footsteps dying away to the westward. “All clear, Georgie,” he said. “Unseal the door, we’re coming aboard.”

  They made the ship without any further trouble. It seemed certain that the Martians would not bother them again for a while, so they decided to hold a short ceremony and annex Mars to the United States. As the first of all earthly creatures to set foot on the new planet, Mrs. Peppercorn was chosen to take possession of it for her country. She tied a small American flag to the handle of her umbrella, then climbing down the ladder to the ground thrust the ferrule of the umbrella into the blackened earth, and said in a loud voice: “In the name of the Bean Family, the Peppercorn family, and the Continental Congress, I take possession of this here planet, and claim it as the sole property of the United States of America, with all its continents, rivers, mountains, lakes and canals; with all its seas, oceans, forests, deserts, and other appurtenances, wherever and howsomedever located and arranged; with all its inhabitants, whether men, animals, birds or bugs; whether smart or dumb. And I further declare that later, if and when it is admitted to statehood, it shall be known as the State of Peppercornia, and—”

  “Hey wait a minute,” Jinx shouted. “If we’re going to name it, let’s put it to a vote. I vote for Jinxia.”

  “Why not call it Georgia?” said the dog.

  “There’s a Georgia already,” Cousin Augustus objected.

  “New Georgia, then.”

  “Voting’s no good,” said Freddy. “We’d each vote for his own name and be right back where we started. Why shouldn’t we call it New Beanland, after Uncle Ben and Mr. Bean?”

  “Beanland indeed!” said Mrs. Peppercorn. “Let me tell you, young man, that the Peppercorns settled half this country before the Beans had got down out of the trees. If the Peppercorns had had their rights, one—yes, perhaps two or three of the original thirteen states would have been named after them.” And she went on to make a speech about the distinguished past of the Peppercorn family which even Charles could not have matched for eloquence.

  But in the end she was voted down. Mars became New Beanland.

  Now at this point, if Freddy had not thought he saw a light moving about some distance off, in the direction of the meadow where they had left their trade goods spread out; if they had got back into the ship and fired themselves off into the sky, in an effort to return to earth—well, goodness only knows what would have happened to them. It is doubtful if they would ever have been seen again around the Bean farm.

  But Freddy did see a light. And he thought: “If we could only capture a Martain and bring him home with us—golly, then we’d have proof we’d been to Mars. That’s what Columbus did—he brought some Indians back to Spain. Nobody’d have believed him if he hadn’t.”

  He didn’t tell the others what he intended. He knew they’d object. He just said: “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and started out.

  The stars gave some light, and it was not as dark among the spikes as it would have been in regular woods; but because the ground was black Freddy fell over a good many things before he came to the edge of the open land. Fortunately the Martian didn’t hear him. He was very busy tying up the trade goods into a big bundle, and the noise of the brook, near which he was working, covered the sound of Freddy’s stumblings. Evidently he intended to make off with the things before anyone else could get them.

  Freddy crouched behind a bush and watched for a few minutes. The Martian looked exactly like a man, though he seemed to have no face—at least when he turned Freddy’s way there was nothing but a white blur under the brim of his hat. Freddy loosened the big pistol in its holster and was preparing to jump out and try to capture him, when he suddenly heaved the big bundle on to his back and started off down along the brook. Freddy followed.

  Pretty soon the brook turned in among the black spikes, but the Martian kept on in a southerly direction. He climbed a wall and crossed what seemed to be a road—Freddy couldn’t see it, but he could feel hard packed earth under his feet. Then the Martian turned towards the west and in a few minutes put down his bundle on the lip of what appeared to be a hole in the ground a little bigger than the Bean barnyard. But when he jumped down in, Freddy saw that it was a depression only about three feet deep.

  The Martian started digging with some
sort of a small tool like a trowel, and Freddy crept closer. He was pretty scared. He had never captured anybody before and didn’t know how to go about it. He could point the pistol and threaten to shoot. But suppose the Martian didn’t know what a pistol was? “Would I have to shoot him?” he thought. “But I don’t want to shoot anybody.” And then he thought, suppose the Martian had some kind of an atom ray gun and all he does is point it at me and pop! I’m just a little heap of dust. He got quite worried about this gun and even found a name for it—the Practical Disintegrator. But that didn’t make him feel any braver.

  He lay there on his stomach and watched the Martian dig, and he said to himself: “Freddy, I don’t believe it’s a very good idea capturing this fellow. There isn’t really room for him in the ship, and when you get him back to the earth, what are you going to do with him?”

  So then he answered himself, and said: “Well, I suppose we could keep him tied up in the box stall in the stable. But what do Martians eat? Maybe we wouldn’t have the right food for him, and he’d get sick.”

  “Yes,” he said, “and anyway this is really kidnaping, and that’s never a nice thing to do.”

  “It’s a crime,” he replied. “Golly, maybe they could send me to prison for it.”

  He nodded his head, and said seriously: “Look, Freddy, this is something you want to think about pretty carefully before you do it. You might get in a lot of trouble.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But the only thing is—if you come back to the ship without him, will somebody say you’re a coward?”

  “I don’t see why,” he answered himself. “You just said you’d be back in a minute, you didn’t say you were going to capture anybody.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Anyway, your reputation is too well known for anyone to accuse you of being afraid.”

  He nodded his head several times, and then he said: “Well, you’ve convinced me. I guess it wasn’t a very good idea.” And as both of him were now in agreement he decided to leave.

  He had pulled out the pistol; now he started to shove it back in the holster. But it caught, and in tugging at it he pulled the trigger. It went off with a tremendous bang.

  Just what happened to the Martian Freddy didn’t see, for the shot made him jump, the lip of the depression where he was lying gave way, and he fell sprawling into what was evidently a mudhole where the Martian had been digging. When he got up and wiped some of the mud off his helmet, the Martian had apparently run away. But between the darkness of the night and the mud, he was practically blind. And now when he looked around, he could see the flicker of lights some distance off, and they seemed to be moving nearer.

  “I’d better get out of here,” he thought, and started back the way he had come. But the lights came rapidly closer; it was impossible for him to outrun them. He turned, drawing the pistol again out of its holster. But before he could make out anything even to point the gun at, three or four flashlights were focused on him, and then he was seized and thrown to the ground; a rope was wound tight around him; and then he was forced again to his feet and dragged off like a dog on a leash.

  He could see nothing of his captors, and he couldn’t reach the button to turn on his outside microphone, to find out if they talked together. All he could do was speak to his friends and tell them that he had been captured. He made quite a noble speech. “Do not attempt to rescue me,” he said. “It is for me to suffer the penalty of my own folly; it is for you to leave me to my fate, however horrible it may be; it is for you to return to earth with the glorious news that a new world has been discovered; for me to pay the price of the discovery. And I do so gladly. Go then, my friends, for home, for country, and for Bean; go and fulfill those high hopes with which we set out—ah, how short a time ago. My blessing goes with you. Farewell, a long farewell.”

  But he was pretty sure that they would try to rescue him.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Freddy’s captors did not take him far. They led him along for a couple of hundred yards, and having tied him to a tree, focused their flashlights on him and began asking questions. At least he supposed they were asking questions, for though he could see nothing with the lights in his eyes, and could hear through his helmet only a confused gabbling, now and then one of them would shake him as if trying to shake an answer out of him. But they didn’t hurt him or abuse him, and after a while they went away.

  Although he was tied to the tree, Freddy wasn’t specially uncomfortable. But he was pretty worried. Of course he had no way of knowing what sort of things Martians ate, but he had an idea that almost everybody was fond of roast pig. Several times in the course of his career as a detective he had been in danger of being baked, fried or roasted. And then, if the Martians didn’t eat him, they might keep him prisoner; and he had no way of getting a fresh supply of oxygen. He wouldn’t be able to last more than a day longer.

  He was engaged with these gloomy thoughts and wishing that he hadn’t made that noble farewell speech, so that he would have an excuse for appealing to his friends for help, when dimly through the mud on his helmet he caught the flicker of an approaching light. It came closer, then someone began wiping the mud off the outside of his helmet. When this was done, the light was held on his face for a long minute. Then it went out and he felt someone untying the ropes.

  The figure looked like a man; if it was one of his friends, it must be either Mrs. Peppercorn or Uncle Ben. “Thank goodness you’ve come,” he said.

  Georgie’s voice answered. “Freddy! What do you mean? For Pete’s sake, where are you? We didn’t know which way you went, so we couldn’t come after you.”

  Freddy’s heart sank. If it was Uncle Ben who was untying him it would be his voice that came through the walkie-talkie, not the voice of Georgie, back in the ship.

  He explained what had happened. “But don’t—repeat, don’t try a rescue. I think I can get back without help.”

  I suppose this was the bravest speech Freddy had ever made, and in the course of his adventures he had made quite a number. But though the speech was brave, he didn’t feel very brave inside. His tail in fact had come completely uncurled, as it always did when he was scared. For though Freddy was brave, he was not fearless; indeed most apparently fearless acts are done by people who are just shivering inside. That’s what bravery usually is.

  Jinx and Georgie and Mrs. Peppercorn all started talking at once, but Freddy said: “This Martian is untying me. He seems friendly. Probably we can’t talk, but I guess I can tell something by the sounds he makes, so I’m cutting out the walkie-talkie and switching on the outside mike, so he and I can hear each other. I’ll cut you in again as soon as I can.”

  The Martian had loosened the ropes; now he turned off his flashlight and tapped Freddy lightly on the shoulder. It seemed to be an encouraging tap, so Freddy said hesitantly: “How—how do you do?”

  The Martian made a funny sort of fizzing noise, but didn’t say anything.

  “Maybe that’s the way Martians say How do you do,” Freddy thought. He said: “Oh dear, I wish you could speak English!” And then, speaking very slowly and distinctly, he said: “Do—you—understand—English?”

  The Martian fizzed again, and then he said, spacing his words as Freddy had; “Guess—I—kin—manage—it—if—you—speak—real—slow.”

  It was surprising that the Martian could use human speech; it was amazing that he could speak English; but it was almost incredible that he could speak just the kind of New York State English that Freddy and his friends always spoke. Of course he spoke it very slowly, and he fizzed a lot between words, so that Freddy wondered if he was some kind of mechanical man, run by an engine.

  Well, they had quite a talk. Mostly the Martian asked questions and Freddy answered, relating the story of their journey through the solar system. He didn’t say anything about their having annexed Mars to the United States, for he didn’t want the Martians to think that the Americans would take away their independence
.

  Now and then a second voice put in a question, so that Freddy was aware that another Martian was present, though of course he couldn’t see him. And it was this second one that asked a question that astonished Freddy even more than the good English that he used. “And when you set out on this journey,” he said, “how did you leave my good friend Mr. Bean?”

  “Mr. Bean!” Freddy exclaimed. “But how—how could you know about Mr. Bean?”

  The voice gave a deep chuckle. “Visited your country many times. Know Bean, know Schermerhorn, know Witherspoon. Very fine country. Martians may take it over some time. Know about you, too. Know about the time you shot a snake in the old Grimby house in the Big Woods, and it turned out to be an old rope. Know about your falling headfirst into Dr. Wintersip’s rain barrel—”

  “But you—you couldn’t!” said Freddy. “Why, that was only the other day!”

  The deep chuckle came again. “Was in Centerboro the other day myself. Don’t believe me, hey? Well, must take you for a drive in my new flying saucer. These new nineteen fifty-four models, with supersonic drive, fingertip control, automatic stardust dodger and all the rest of it—as you say on earth, they’re something!” The first Martian began making such loud fizzing sounds at this point that he stopped.

  “Is he talking Martian to you?” Freddy asked.

  “Martian? Er—ha! Hum! Yes.” The question seemed to embarrass him. Then he said: “Matter of fact, he wants me to show you who I am. Better prepare for a shock. Because I live part of the time on earth—up in the Big Woods, in fact; and you’ve talked to me a good many times. A light, if you please, Mr. Er—uh …”

  The beam from the flashlight came on and swung around up into the tree above them, and Freddy gasped. For there sat the owl, Old Whibley, who did indeed live in the Big Woods.

  There sat the owl, old Whibley.

  “But this—it’s impossible!” Freddy stammered. “You—well, for one thing, you couldn’t breathe this air on Mars.”