John Rackham

by We The Venusians

  "Surely a lot is known, by now?" Willers interrupted.

  "Hardly anything," Harper insisted. "In fifty years—a planet almost as big as Earth, and with those conditions— hardly anything is known. One small comer, only. Visibility is nil, except where there are trees. For some not-understood reason, the spore-mist avoids tree masses. Radio is useless,

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  except for a crude unmodulated beacon-signal effect, which we use for markers only. Any kind of mobility is arduous. The surface is treacherous. Flying is out of the question. Venus is not hospitable, Mr. Willers. She yields her secrets grudgingly."

  The view-ports darkened, now, increasing Anthony's sense of unreality. Harper's flow of information had come like pebbles tossed one at a time into a still pool, only where there should have been splashes, each pebble had melted and been absorbed without so much as a ripple. Now the interior of the shuttle-rocket was lit with a brassy glare like the prologue to a thunderstorm as the craft dipped into the swirling mist. An arabesque of golden yellow whipped past, shifting into pearly-blue, then angry red and pearly-blue again.

  "Weird stuff," Harper muttered, over the whine of friction. "It's as if there were distinct colonies of various strains, clumping together . . . hence the shifting colors. That's just speculation, though. We don't really know. That's my point, Mr. Willers. It would take generations of biochemists just to study this atmosphere thoroughly."

  It was like diving into an insane artist's palette, Anthony mused, presuming the artist had stirred all his pigments together with a fine frenzy, and then set fire to them. And it wasn't real, any of it. It was just a dodge, a trick to stir him out of his very comfortable disengagement, to get him interested, involved . . . and hurt. But he wasn't to be caught like that again.

  Then there came the sudden giant squeeze of braking, the tug at the pit of his stomach, and a shudder through the fabric of the shuttle-ship. And then silence, and a leaden-white glare outside.

  "Stay where you are," Harper commanded. "It will take a few moments to get the freight-cans clear. You will know when they open the passenger-hatch, because it will become very hot. Don't let it upset you too much; it won't be for long. When I give the word, be ready to follow me down and out, and stick close, in single file. Taylor, you'll follow me. Then Miss Merrill, and then you, Willers . . ."

  The lid came off a giant seething cauldron, gushing odorous steam up through the hatch-way. Anthony felt his clothing sag and stick to him, in the space of one gasping

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  breath. Then he was following Harper, feeling the spurt and drip of sweat from every pore, down a ladder, through an oblong hold in the mist, down a steep ramp, and on to a solid ground. First foot on Venus. It should have been a momentous thing, but all he could think of was the unbelievable heat, and the desperate need to keep Harper's blurred form within sight. Suddenly, darkness loomed up out of the steam . . . another hole in the gray ... a glare of light, muffled noises, machinery, voices, Martha Merrill jostling him from behind . . . and then a heavy boom of power, and the first breath of comparative coolness.

  "The worst is over," Harper said. "We are now within the double-wall of the dome. This is where we keep our outside transporters, and the machinery which maintains our internal atmosphere."

  "These walls go all the way up?" Willers asked.

  "No. This space is an anchor for the skin of the dome proper."

  "Must be thick stuff, to cover a mile circle?"

  Most of the mist had cleared, and there was a respectably cool breeze. Anthony saw Harper smiling, heard the satisfaction in his explaining voice.

  "No, it's really quite thin. T>ome' is a misleading term. Think of it as a huge bubble."

  "Then what keeps it up?" Willers demanded.

  "Just air-pressure." The words came from a squat, muscular man who had approached them out of the gloom. A hard, competent face, Anthony thought, with some of Harper's arrogance, plus a quick impatience. A hard, arrogant body, too, and red hair. This man wore only brief black shorts and soft sandals, and seemed to think that sufficient.

  "Air-pressure?"Willers echoed. "But you'd want a hell of a pressure to hold up a bubble half a mile high. How do you breathe?"

  "Think again," the stranger advised, with a grin that moved only his mouth. "One tenth of a pound per square inch is all. One tenth of a pound greater than the atmosphere outside. Doesn't sound much, but there are a lot of square inches on the underside of a hemisphere half a mile radius. Total effective pressure adds up to just under three hundred thousand tons. Bord, who are these people? Tourists?"

  "Don't ask questions, Barney, not yet." Harper was terse.

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  He mentioned their names, introduced the stranger as Bernard Lyons, left it at that. To his guests, he said, "In a moment, we shall enter the dome. We call it Prime Base. For many years I have called it home. I want you to feel welcome. I hope your brief stay will be a pleasant one. But I want to wam you: We are not ordinary people, here, and our ways are not ordinary ways. Try to be patient; observe without comment, and save your questions for a later moment. Right now, the first person we want to see is M'Grath. You any idea where he is, Barney?"

  "Central Assembly Hall, waiting for you. Where else? Ready to go, now?" Lyons moved across to a great oval door, put his hand on a lever.

  "Yes, I think so. Just one more warning," Harper smiled. "It's cold, on the other side. We maintain the internal temperature at a steady twenty-five degrees. Centigrade, that is. Just under eight-five, Fahrenheit?"

  'That's not exactly cold," Anthony said, critically, and was amazed at the indifference in his own voice. Harper smiled again.

  "Compared with this," he said, "you'll think it chilly, at first." The door-mechanism thrummed, and Harper was right. Anthony shivered as the air-stream leached away the sweat from his body. Then he was shocked out of his indifference as bright sunlight streamed through the doorway. Sunlight, here? He moved forward, lifting his foot high over the lip of the door, and gawked at the sight. Behind him, and to right and left, a great wall of light swept up and away overhead into the "sky." But that was a soft glow, and the "sunlight" was higher still, ahead, and so bright that his eye held back from it. Before him, laid out serenely under the great canopy of light, was a scene that caught at his throat for just a moment.

  It was a dream made real. Broad streets, spacious vistas, the gray and white dignity of Greek temples, Roman villas and gingerbread castles ... all looking exactly as if they had just this minute been soaped, scrubbed and sprayed with perfume and pastel tints. For just one moment, he accepted it all at face value. Then a hard realism he had never before suspected within himself punctured the illusion, and he saw what was really there. Foamed concrete, tinted plastic, chrome and titanium and cunning design . . .

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  all run together into a magnificent fraud, an escape from the overpowering reality "outside."

  "It must have cost a fortune," Martha breathed, and Harper shrugged, not displeased at the comment.

  "We like it. We don't count cost, here. What we want, we get, even if we have to have it specially made and imported. The flowers, for instance, all come from Earth. Venus has no flowers."

  "And the colored air?"Willers demanded. "You import that, too?"

  "No. That's local. Residual traces of spore-mist that gets by the filters. We could get rid of it, but why bother? It does no harm and it's pretty. Barney, get a car."

  Prompted by some instinct, Anthony looked over his shoulder, to the door they had just left. And he saw his first Greenies. A dozen of them, in threes, were bowed under the weight of a series of alloy cans, flat disc-shaped containers three feet across and a foot thick. Bare feet slapping the concrete, they labored to haul the cans to a waiting flat-car and stack them on it. In charge was a tall, tow-haired man in a brief kilt, with a bored expression, and carrying a coiled whip. Anthony felt suddenly giddy, as he watched.

  They were caricatures of men. Naked as an
imals, so emaciated that their bones threatened to rip the blotchy green skin, their sunken eyes were almost black, and glazed, without life. Wispy black hair patched their skulls, making them seem the more bony and bald. Their efforts to cooperate were clumsy and pitiful, but every time one stumbled, Anthony saw that hanging whip-arm twitch. As they completed their labor, and shambled away, he was able to let out the breath he had been holding. One of those . . . I'm one like that . . . the thought was a scream in his mind. He jerked away, bumped into Martha. Her face showed that she had seen.

  "Weren't they awful?" she breathed. "I should be terrified for my life if I ran into one."

  "I couldn't help overhearing," Harper put in. "Your fears are quite unnecessary, my dear. They're absolutely harmless. A problem, to us, but nothing for you to worry about." Another flat-car came sliding up, Lyons in control, and Harper waved them all aboard.

  "Yes," he sighed, settling into a seat. "They're a problem. We can't keep them alive long enough to be able to train them to anything worthwhile. They won't eat anything we offer them, won't touch anything except sugar, and they go crazy for that. But they don't live long."

  "Surely," Anthony was surprised again at his own voice, "surely they eat the famous beans, don't they. Why not feed them those?"

  "Are you kidding?" Lyons demanded. "Talk about pearls before swine! We're here to collect and market the beans, not waste them as cattle-food."

  "You might as well learn about our cars," Harper interrupted smoothly. "They are all like this, inside the domes. Our floor is aluminium-titanium alloy layered, underneath. The car is powered so that it rides on electro-magnetic fields. Barney, show them how to operate the controls."

  The city opened out as they glided nearer. Anthony saw without seeing, his mind's eye full of shambling green monsters. The car sped on, came to a silent halt at the foot of a magnificent flight of white steps outside what was an idealized copy of a Greek temple. Anthony was struck, all at once, by the fact that there was no one about. Was it some special hour, for everyone to be indoors? What was the time, anyway . . . did they have time at all, here?

  "We most certainly do," Harper turned, pointed upwards. "Look there. We are now directly under the centerpoint of the dome. Don't look directly at the 'sun,' but just a shade to one side." Up there, suspended in the void, was a ring of numerals around the central light. They glowed in golden fire, and a dark red arrow-head of flame pointed. "It's a projection, from the roof of the Central Hall, and can be seen from any point within the dome. We keep a twenty-four hour cycle, just like Earth. As you can see, it is just on nineteen forty-five."

  "Is it always like this?" Martha asked. "No nighttime?"

  "Sunset at eight-thirty," Lyons explained. "Pretty spectacular, it is. We have stars, and a moon, too. You'll see. Come on," he led them up the steps and on to a mighty pillared portico fit for a Caesar.

  "Where is everybody?" Willers demanded. Harper smiled grimly.

  "They will all be sitting beside their visor-screens, eager

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  to see just what I've brought them from Earth. They are due for a surprise."

  "Not just them I" Lyons said, pointedly, and Anthony felt the first small itch of wonder. Harper's single-minded self-assurance was now giving way to nervous tension. The moments ahead were obviously going to be crucial to his scheme, whatever it was. Wondering, Anthony let himself be led along mighty corridors, where all the walls were frescoed, or hung with tapestry and pictures, where there was not a nook or comer but what had a carving of some kind to enhance it. Some of the more famous items he was able to recognize, but most were strange to him. He "guessed" that they were all valuable, and was mildly shaken as Harper halted long enough to explain.

  "Reproductions only," he said, waving one hand in an embracing gesture. "We are not squirrels, here. We have them for their intrinsic beauty, not their rarity value, whatever that may be."

  They came to the central chamber, a great amphitheatre where tiered seats ran down to a circular space of a hundred feet across. It would have been a fit setting for an empire-shaking debate, or a circus, but was almost vacant now. A great glass-topped table took up only a fraction of the area. A man sat there, quite still, waiting.

  "There's M'Grath, now," Harper made for a gangway, was almost running. Anthony felt that sense of urgency grow as he trod down the incline, saw the waiting man put his hand on an instrument-console. Lights glowed, and there were cameras, all pointing into that area. Harper had said "they" would be watching.

  The man at the table stood up, impressively. In every sense of the word, he was huge. The top of his completely bald head was six foot three from the ground, and massive, merging without appreciable neck into broad shoulders. From there a loose toga-like garment hung, in capacious folds swelling out over a bulging belly.

  "Welcome home, Borden," he said, in a carefully level voice. "You, and your guests."

  "Dr. M'Grath . . ." Harper gestured, "Miss Martha Merrill, Austin Willers, Anthony Taylor."

  "I'm fat!" M'Grath said, forthrightly. "I say it to save you the embarrassment. I am fat, by choice. It is my way of

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  emphasizing the fact that I am an individual. I ask you, now, to sit, so that I may sit also."

  "Dr. M'Grath is our father-confessor, spiritual guide and general wailing-wall," Harper supplied. "More accurately, our resident psychiatrist."

  M'Grath shifted his eyes only. "That explains me to them," he said. "I'm waiting to hear you explain them to me."

  "You're the psychiatrist," Harper retorted. "You deal in explanations. I'd rather show, by actions. That way, there can't be any argument."

  "Get to the point, Borden. Why have you brought these people here?"

  "Let me do it my way, M'Grath. I've had a shock. I'm going to pass it on to you, but I want to prepare you, first. Listen, I've been back to Earth. Nothing's changed, except for the worse. I'm glad to be home again. Get that clear. But . . ." Harper paused, and Anthony wondered just what he was struggling with. "It came by accident. In a cheap smoke-and-spit dive in New York, I heard this man, Willers, doing an impression ... he was imitating an Italian-type singer, for a gag-routine. In his own words, he has a trick voice and a trick memory. I put him on provisional notice . . . for me . . . because he had given me a hell of a turn. Later, in London, it happened all over again. I heard this girl, a hopeful from the Australian outback, trying to sell herself as a singer, a soprano. I couldn't get her alone at that time, so I followed her, and she led me direct to this man . . . and I heard him playing a piano. And that was enough. I knew what I had to do. I rounded up the three of them, and here they are."

  "That much is evident," M'Grath sighed. He leveled his eyes on the guests. Anthony thought he looked like a man carrying a world on his back. "I should explain," he said, carefully, "that Borden Harper is not musical. Most of us are, here."

  "They heard Ricco singing, and Milly Ko playing, as we came by," Lyons offered. M'Grath sighed again.

  "We have a plentitude of singers, of both sexes, and all the pianists we need, already. Borden . . . why did you bring these people?"

  "Let's start with you," Harper said deliberately. "You're a pianist, aren't you? As good as any, wouldn't you say?"

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  "I appreciate your respect for my modesty. Yes, I play. I make no claim to entertain. I play for my pleasure, the land of music your man here will scarcely have heard of . . . nor would respect if he heard it. I fear you've made a gross error, Borden, if you think I am about to change my tastes."

  "You're going to change your mind, though. M'Grath, your piano-playing stinks! Now tell me again that I'm not musical, and I don't know what I'm talking about . . . and then 111 have Mr. Taylor, here, show you!"

  M'Grath sat quite still, breathing slowly. Then he stirred and one finger beat a slow tap-tap-tap on the table top. "There must be some reason for this personal animus, this attack without provocation."

  "Medicine isn't
supposed to be pleasant," Harper snapped. "But if it's any good, it should work on everybody. If you're scared to try it, say so, but don't twist it into my problem. It's yours. I'm not attacking you, as a person. I'm challenging your standards. At least, Taylor will do it for me. You understand, Taylor?"

  "Yes," Anthony nodded, beginning to catch something of what Harper was trying to do. "I think so . . . but where's the piano? I'm not playing that one we heard, just now."

  "Why not?"M'Grath asked, with ponderous gentleness. "Isn't it the kind of piano you're familiar with?" Anthony looked him full in the eye, with a strange belligerence.

  "You may like playing a piano out of tune. I don't."

  "Out of tune? Oh, fiddle-faddle! An excuse . . ."

  "Out of tune!" Anthony said flatly, and M'Grath stared.

  "Indeed!" he said, with an edge to his voice. "This nonsense has gone far enough. Cornel" He got to his feet with surprising speed, and swept off in an imperious flutter of trailing robes. This gangway led down and aside, into an ante-chamber, a broad room lined with shelves stacked with tape-spools. In one comer was a visor-screen, looking out into the room. Anthony's eye went to the opposite comer, at once.

  "I call this my study," M'Grath said. "And this is my piano. Now . .. sir, tell me that is out of rune!"

  Anthony eyed it with respect. Another Steinway, and a thing of rare beauty, in his eyes. But when he spread a

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  hand, struck a chord, his teeth clicked. He tried another, and shook his head, ruefully.