Space, Space, Space - Stories about the Time when Men will be Adventuring to the Stars

by William Sloane

  One of them gesticulated back at him. “Captain, don’t you wish to be the first to step upon this world?”

  “It is of no consequence. If anyone deems it an honor, he is welcome to it.” He pulled the lever opening both air-lock doors. Thicker, heavier air crowded in and pressure went up a little. “Beware of overexertion,” he warned as they went out.

  Poet Fander touched him, tentacles tip to tip as he sent his thoughts racing through their nerve-ends. “This confirms all that we saw as we approached. A stricken planet far gone in its death throes. What do you suppose caused it?”

  “I have not the remotest idea. I would like to know. If it has been smitten by natural forces, what might they do to Mars?” His troubled mind sent its throb of worry up Fander’s contacting tentacle. “A pity that this planet had not been farther out instead of closer in; we might then have observed the preceding phenomena from the surface of Mars. It is so difficult properly to view this one against the sun.”

  “That applies still more to the next world, the misty one,” observed Poet Fander.

  “I know it. I am beginning to fear what we may find there. If it proves to be equally dead, then we are stalled until we can make the big jump outward.”

  “Which won’t be in our lifetimes.”

  “I doubt it,” agreed Captain Skhiva. “We might move fast with the help of friends. We shall be slow— alone.” He turned to watch his crew writhing in various directions across the grim landscape. “They find it good to be on firm ground. But what is a world without life and beauty? In a short time they will grow tired of it.”

  Fander said thoughtfully, “Nevertheless, I would like to see more of it. May I take out the lifeboat?”

  “You are a songbird, not a pilot,” reproved Captain Skhiva. “Your function is to maintain morale by entertaining us, not to roam around in a lifeboat.”

  “But I know how to handle it. Every one of us was trained to handle it. Let me take it that I may see more.”

  “Haven’t we seen enough, even before we landed? What else is there to see? Cracked and distorted roads about to dissolve into nothingness. Ages-old cities, torn and broken, crumbling into dust. Shattered mountains and charred forests and craters little smaller than those upon the Moon. No sign of any superior life-form still surviving. Only the grass, the shrubs, and various animals, two- or four-legged, that flee at our approach. Why do you wish to see more?”

  “There is poetry even in death,” said Fander. “Even so, it remains repulsive.” Skhiva gave a little shiver. “All right. Take the lifeboat. Who am I to question the weird workings of the nontechnical mind?”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “It is nothing. See that you are back by dusk.”

  Breaking contact, he went to the lock, curled snakishly on its outer rim and brooded, still without bothering to touch the new world. So much attempted, so much done—for so poor reward.

  He was still pondering it when the lifeboat soared out of its lock. Expressionlessly, his multi-faceted eyes watched the energized grids change angle as the boat swung into a curve and floated away like a little bubble. Skhiva was sensitive to futility.

  The crew came back well before darkness. A few hours were enough. Just grass and shrubs and child-trees straining to grow up. One had discovered a grassless oblong that once might have been the site of a dwelling. He brought back a small piece of its foundation, a lump of perished concrete which Skhiva put by for later analysis.

  Another had found a small, brown, six-legged insect, but his nerve-ends had heard it crying when he picked it up, so hastily he had put it down and let it go free. Small, clumsily moving animals had been seen hopping in the distance, but all had dived down holes in the ground before any Martian could get near. All the crew were agreed upon one thing: the silence and solemnity of a people’s passing was unendurable.

  Fander beat the sinking of the sun by half a time-unit. His bubble drifted under a great, black cloud, sank to ship-level, came in. The rain started a moment later, roaring down in frenzied torrents while they stood behind the transparent band and marveled at so much water.

  After a while, Captain Skhiva told them, “We must accept what we find. We have drawn a blank. The cause of this worlds condition is a mystery to be solved by others with more time and better equipment. It is for us to abandon this graveyard and try the misty planet. We will take off early in the morning.”

  None commented, but Fander followed him to his room, made contact with a tentacle-touch.

  “One could live here, Captain.”

  “I am not so sure of that.” Skhiva coiled on his couch, suspending his tentacles on the various limb-rests. The blue sheen of him was reflected by the back wall. “In some places are rocks emitting alpha sparks. They are dangerous.”

  “Of course, Captain. But I can sense them and avoid them.”

  “You?” Skhiva stared up at him.

  “Yes, Captain. I wish to be left here.”

  “What?—in this place of appalling repulsiveness?”

  “It has an all-pervading air of ugliness and despair,” admitted Poet Fander. “All destruction is ugly. But by accident I have found a little beauty. It heartens me. I would like to seek its source.”

  “To what beauty do you refer?” Skhiva demanded. Fander tried to explain the alien in non-alien terms.

  “Draw it for me,” ordered Skhiva.

  Fander drew it, gave him the picture, said, “There!” Gazing at it for a long time, Skhiva handed it back, mused awhile, then spoke along the other’s nerves. “We are individuals with all the rights of individuals. As an individual, I don’t think that picture sufficiently beautiful to be worth the tail-tip of a domestic arlan. I will admit that it is not ugly, even that it is pleasing.”

  “But, Captain—”

  “As an individual,” Skhiva went on, “you have an equal right to your opinions, strange though they may be. If you really wish to stay I cannot refuse you. I am entitled only to think you a little crazy.” He eyed Fander again. “When do you hope to be picked up?”

  “This year, next year, sometime, never.”

  “It may well be never,” Skhiva reminded. “Are you prepared to face that prospect?”

  “One must always be prepared to face the consequences of his own actions,” Fander pointed out.

  “True.” Skhiva was reluctant to surrender. “But have you given the matter serious thought?”

  “I am a non-technical component. I am not guided by thought.”

  “Then by what?”

  “By my desires, emotions, instincts. By my inward feelings.”

  Skhiva said fervently, “The twin moons preserve us!

  “Captain, sing me a song of home and play me the tinkling harp.”

  “Don’t be silly. I have not the ability.”

  “Captain, if it required no more than careful thought you would be able to do it?”

  “Doubtless,” agreed Skhiva, seeing the trap but unable to avoid it.

  “There you are!” said Fander pointedly.

  “I give up. I cannot argue with someone who casts aside the accepted rules of logic and invents his own. You are governed by notions that defeat me.”

  “It is not a matter of logic or illogic,” Fander told him. “It is merely a matter of viewpoint. You see certain angles; I see others.”

  “For example?”

  “You won’t pin me down that way. I can find examples. For instance, do you remember the formula for determining the phase of a series-tuned circuit?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “I felt sure you would. You are a technician. You have registered it for all time as a matter of technical utility.” He paused, staring at Skhiva. “I know that formula, too. It was mentioned to me, casually, many years ago. It is of no use to me—yet I have never forgotten it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it holds the beauty of rhythm. It is a poem.” Skhiva sighed and said, “I don’t get it.”

&
nbsp; “One upon R into omega L minus one upon omega C,” recited Fander. “A perfect hexameter.” He showed his amusement as the other rocked back.

  After a while, Skhiva remarked, “It could be sung. One could dance to it.”

  “Same with this.” Fander exhibited his rough sketch. “This holds beauty. Where there is beauty there once was talent—may still be talent for all we know. Where talent abides is also greatness. In the realms of greatness we may find powerful friends. We need such friends.”

  “You win.” Skhiva made a gesture of defeat. “We leave you to your self-chosen fate in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  The same streak of stubbornness which made Skhiva a worthy commander induced him to take one final crack at Fander shortly before departure. Summoning him to his room, he eyed the poet calculatingly.

  “You are still of the same mind?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Then does it not occur to you as strange that I should be so content to abandon this planet if indeed it does hold the remnants of greatness?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Skhiva stiffened slightly.

  “Captain, I think you are a little afraid because you suspect what I suspect: that there was no natural disaster. They did it themselves—to themselves.”

  “We have no proof of it,” said Skhiva uneasily.

  “No, Captain.” Fander posed there without desire to add more.

  “If this is their own sad handiwork,” Skhiva commented at length, “what are our chances of finding friends among people so much to be feared?”

  “Poor,” admitted Fander. “But that—being the product of cold thought—means little to me. I am animated by warm hopes.”

  “There you go again, blatantly discarding reason in favor of an idle dream. Hoping, hoping, hoping— to achieve the impossible.”

  Fander said, “The difficult can be done at once; the impossible takes a little longer.”

  “Your thoughts make my orderly mind feel lopsided. Every remark is a flat denial of something that makes sense.” Skhiva transmitted the sensation of a lugubrious chuckle. “Oh, well, we live and learn.” He came forward, moving closer to the other. “All your supplies are assembled outside. Nothing remains but to bid you goodby.”

  They embraced in the Martian manner. Leaving the lock, Poet Fander watched the big sphere shudder and glide up. It soared without sound, shrinking steadily until it was a mere dot entering a cloud. A moment later it had gone.

  He remained there, looking at the cloud, for a long, long time. Then he turned his attention to the load-sled holding his supplies. Climbing onto its tiny, exposed front seat, he shifted the control which energized the flotation-grids, let it rise a few feet. The higher the rise the greater the expenditure of power. He wished to conserve power; there was no knowing how long he might need it. So at low altitude and gentle pace he let the sled glide in the general direction of the thing of beauty.

  Later, he found a dry cave in the hill on which his objective stood. It took him two days of careful, cautious raying to square its walls, ceiling and floor, plus half a day with a powered fan driving out silicate dust. After that, he stowed his supplies at the back, parked the sled near the front, set up a curtaining force-screen across the entrance. The hole in the hill was now home.

  Slumber did not come easily that first night. He lay within the cave, a ropy, knotted thing of glowing blue with enormous, bee-like eyes, and found himself listening for harps that played sixty million miles away. His tentacle-ends twitched in involuntary search of the telepathic-contact songs that would go with the harps, and twitched in vain. Darkness grew deep and all the world a monstrous stillness held. His hearing organs craved for the eventide flip flop of sand-frogs, but there were no frogs. He wanted the homely drone of night beetles, but none droned. Except for once when something faraway howled its heart at the Moon, there was nothing, nothing.

  In the morning he washed, ate, took out the sled and explored the site of a small town. He found little to satisfy his curiosity, no more than mounds of shapeless rubble on ragged, faintly oblong foundations. It was a graveyard of long-dead domiciles, rotting, weedy, near to complete oblivion. A view from five hundred feet up gave him only one piece of information: the orderliness of outlines showed that these people had been tidy, methodical.

  But tidiness is not beauty in itself. He came back to the top of his hill and sought solace with the thing that was beauty.

  His explorations continued, not systematically as Skhiva would have performed them, but in accordance with his own mercurial whims. At times he saw many animals, singly or in groups, none resembling anything Martian. Some scattered at full gallop when his sled swooped over them. Some dived into ground-holes, showing a brief flash of white, absurd tails. Others, four-footed, long-faced, sharp-toothed, hunted in gangs and bayed at him in concert with harsh, defiant voices.

  On the seventieth day, in a deep, shadowed glade to the north, he spotted a small group of new shapes slinking along in single file. He recognized them at a glance, knew them so well that his searching eyes sent an immediate thrill of triumph into his mind. They were ragged, dirty and no more than half-grown, but the thing of beauty had told him what they were.

  Hugging the ground low, he swept around in a wide curve that brought him to the farther end of the glade. His sled sloped slightly into the drop as it entered the glade. He could see them better now, even the soiled pinkishness of their thin legs. They were moving away from him, with fearful caution, but the silence of his swoop gave them no warning.

  The rearmost one of the stealthy file fooled him at the last moment. He was hanging over the side of the sled, tentacles outstretched in readiness to snatch the end one with the wild mop of yellow hair when, responding to some sixth sense, his intended victim threw itself flat. His grasp shot past a couple of feet short and he got a glimpse of frightened gray eyes two seconds before a dexterous side-tilt of the sled enabled him to make good his loss by grabbing the less wary next in line.

  This one was dark-haired, a bit bigger, and sturdier. It fought madly at his holding limbs while he gained altitude. Then suddenly, realizing the queer nature of its bonds, it writhed around and looked straight at him. The result was unexpected; it closed its eyes and went completely limp.

  It was still limp when he bore it into the cave, but its heart continued to beat and its lungs to draw. Laying it carefully on the softness of his bed, he moved to the cave’s entrance and waited for it to recover. Eventually it stirred, sat up, gazed confusedly at the facing wall. Its black eyes moved slowly around, taking in the surroundings. Then they saw Fander. They widened tremendously and their owner began to make high-pitched, unpleasant noises as it tried to back away through the solid wall. It screamed so much, in one rising throb after another, that Fander slithered out of the cave, right out of sight, and sat in the cold winds until the noises had died down.

  A couple of hours later he made cautious reappearance to offer it food, but its reaction was so swift, hysterical and heart-rending that he dropped his load and hid himself as though the fear was his own. The food remained untouched for two full days. On the third, a little of it was eaten. Fander ventured within.

  Although the Martian did not go near, the boy cowered away murmuring, “Devil! Devil!” His eyes were red, with dark discoloration beneath them.

  “Devil!” thought Fancier, totally unable to repeat the alien word, but wondering what it meant. He used his sign-talking tentacle in valiant effort to convey something reassuring. The attempt was wasted. The other watched its writhings half in fear, half with distaste, and showed complete lack of comprehension. He let the tentacle gently slither forward across the floor, hoping to make thought-contact. The other recoiled from it as from a striking snake.

  “Patience,” he reminded himself. “The impossible takes a little longer.”

  Periodically he showed himself with food and drink, and nighttimes he slept fitfully
on the coarse, damp grass beneath lowering skies—while the prisoner who was his guest enjoyed the softness of the bed, the warmth of the cave, the security of the force-screen.

  Time came when Fander betrayed an unpoetic shrewdness by using the other’s belly to estimate the ripeness of the moment. When, on the eighth day, he noted that his food-offerings were now being taken regularly, he took a meal of his own at the edge of the cave, within plain sight, and observed that the other’s appetite was not spoiled. That night he slept just within the cave, close to the force-screen, and as far from the boy as possible. The boy stayed awake late, watching him, always watching him, but gave way to slumber in the small hours.

  A fresh attempt at sign-talking brought no better results than before, and the boy still refused to touch his offered tentacle. All the same, he was gaining ground slowly. His overtures still were rejected, but with less revulsion. Gradually, ever so gradually, the Martian shape was becoming familiar, almost acceptable.

  The sweet savor of success was Fander’s in the middle of the next day. The boy had displayed several spells of emotional sickness during which he lay on his front with shaking body and emitted low noises while his eyes watered profusely. At such times the Martian felt strangely helpless and inadequate. On this occasion, during another attack, he took advantage of the sufferer’s lack of attention and slid near enough to snatch away the box by the bed.

  From the box he drew his tiny electro-harp, plugged its connectors, switched it on, touched its strings with delicate affection. Slowly he began to play, singing an accompaniment deep inside himself. For he had no voice with which to sing out loud, but the harp sang it for him. The boy ceased his quiverings, sat up, all his attention upon the dexterous play of the tentacles and the music they conjured forth. And when he judged that at last the listener’s mind was captured, Fander ceased with easy, quietening strokes, gently offered him the harp. The boy registered interest and reluctance. Careful not to move nearer, not an inch nearer, Fander offered it at full tentacle length. The boy had to take four steps to get it. He took them.