“What?” said Ma.
“Nothing,” I told her. “That’s the peculiar thing. There was nothing peculiar. Here the ostriches wear hats and the birds have propellers and the streets go nowhere and the houses haven’t any backs to them, but that cockroach didn’t even have feathers.”
“Are you sure?” Ellen wanted to know.
“Sure I’m sure. Well, let’s take the next rise and see what’s over it.”
We went, and we saw. Down in between that hill and the next, the road took another sharp turn, and facing us was the front view of a tent with a big banner that said, “Penny Arcade.”
This time I didn’t even break stride. I said. “They copied that banner from the show Sam Heideman used to have. Remember Sam, and the old days, Ma?”
“That drunken no-good?” asked Ma.
“Why, you liked him, too, Ma.”
“Yes, and I liked you but that doesn’t prove that you aren’t or that he isn’t.”
“Why, Ma,” I interrupted. But by that time we were right in front of the tent. Looked like real canvas because it billowed gently. I said, “I haven’t got the heart. Who wants to look through this time?”
But Ma already had her head through the flap of the tent. I heard her say, “Why, hello Sam, you old soak.”
I said, “Ma, quit kidding or I’ll —” But by that time I was past her and inside the tent, and it was a tent, all four sides of one and a good big one at that. And it was lined with the old familiar coin machines. There, counting coins in the change booth was Sam Heideman, looking up with almost as much surprise on his face as there must have been in mine.
He said, “Pop Wherry! I’ll be a dirty name.” Only he didn’t say “dirty name” — but he didn’t get around to apologizing to Ma and Ellen for that until he and I had pounded each other’s backs and then he’d shaken hands around and been introduced to Johnny Lane.
It was just like old times on the Mars and Venus carney lots. He was telling Ellen how she’d been just “so high” when he’d seen her last and did she really remember him? And then Ma sniffed.
When Ma sniffs like that, there’s something to look at, and I got my eyes off good old Sam and looked at Ma and then at where Ma was looking. I didn’t sniff, but I gasped.
A woman was coming forward from somewhere in the back of the tent and when I call her a woman, it’s because I can’t think of the right word if there is one. She was St. Cecilia and Guinevere and a Petty girl all ironed into one. She was like a sunset in New Mexico and the cold, silver moons of Mars seen from the Equatorial Gardens. She was like a Venusian valley in the spring and like Dorzalski playing the violin. She was really somethin’!
I heard another gasp from alongside of me, and it was an unfamiliar note. Took me a second to realize why it was unfamiliar. I’d never heard Johnny Lane gasp before.
It was an effort, but I shifted my eyes for a look at his face. And I thought, “Oh-oh. Poor Ellen.” For the poor boy was gone now, no question about it.
And just in time — maybe seeing Johnny helped me — I managed to remember that I’m pushing fifty and happily married. I took hold of Ma’s arm and hung on.
“Sam,” I said, “who on Ea — on whatever planet this is —”
Sam turned around and looked behind him. He said, “Miss Ambers, I’d like you to meet some old friends of mine just dropped in. Mrs. Wherry, this is Miss Ambers, the movie star.”
Then he finished the introductions, first Ellen, then me and then Johnny. Ma and Ellen were too polite. Me, I maybe went the other way by pretending not to notice the hand Miss Ambers held out. Old as I am, I had a hunch I might forget to let it go if I took it. That’s the kind of a girl she was.
Johnny did forget.
Sam was saving, “Pop, you old pirate, what are you doing here? I thought you stuck to the colonies where you’d get a play, and I sure didn’t look for you to drop in on a movie set.”
“A movie set!” I said. Things began to make sense, almost.
“Sure. Planetary Cinema, Inc. With me as technical adviser on carney scenes. They wanted inside shots of a penny arcade so I just brought my old stuff out of storage and set it up. All the boys are over at the base camp now.”
Light was just beginning to dawn on me. “And that restaurant front up the street? That’s a set?” I queried.
“Sure, and the street itself. They didn’t need it, but they had to film the making of it for one sequence.”
“Oh,” I went on. “But how about the ostrich with the bow tie, and the birds with the propellers? They couldn’t have been movie props. Or could they?” I’d heard that Planetary Cinema, Inc., did some pretty impossible things.
Sam shook his head a bit blankly. “Nope, you must have seen some of the local fauna. There are a few, but not many, and they don’t get in the way.”
Ma said, “Look here, Sam Heideman, how come if this planet has been discovered, we hadn’t heard about it? How long has it been known, and what’s it all about?”
“Man named Wilkins discovered this planet ten years ago,” Sam chuckled. “Reported it to the Council, but before it got publicized, Planetary Cinema got wind of it and offered the Council a whooping rental for the place on the condition that its existence be kept secret. As there aren’t any minerals or anything of value here and the soil ain’t worth a whoop, the Council rented it to them on those terms.”
“But why secret?”
“No visitors, no distractions, not to mention the jump on their competitors. All the big movie companies spy on one another and swipe each other’s ideas. You should know that by now. Here they got all the space they want and can work in peace and privacy.”
“What’ll they do about us finding the place?” I wanted to know.
Sam chuckled again. “Guess they’ll entertain you royally now that you’re here and try to persuade you to keep it under your hat. You’ll probably get a free pass for life to all the Planetary Cinema theaters, too.”
He went over to a cabinet and came back with a tray of bottles and glasses. Ma and Ellen declined, but Sam and I had a couple apiece, and it was good stuff. Johnny and Miss Ambers were over in a corner of the tent whispering together so earnestly that we didn’t bother them, especially when I told Sam that Johnny didn’t drink.
Johnny still had hold of her hand and was gazing into her eyes like a sick pup. I noticed Ellen moved around so she was looking the other way and didn’t have to watch. I felt sorry for her, but there wasn’t anything I could do. Something like that just happens if it happens. And if I’d been Johnny’s age and it hadn’t been for Ma —
But I saw Ma was getting impatient and edgy and after a few yarns back and forth, I said we’d better get back to the ship and get dressed up, if we were due to be entertained royally. Then we’d move the ship in closer. I reckoned we could spare a few days on Nothing Sirius. I left Sam in stitches by telling him how and why we’d named the planet that, after a look at the local fauna.
Then I gently pried Johnny loose from the movie star and led him outside. It wasn’t easy. There was a blank, blissful expression on his face, and he’d even forgotten to salute me when I’d spoken to him. He hadn’t called me “sir” either. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all.
Neither did any of the rest of us, walking up the street. There was something knocking at my mind, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. There was something wrong, something that didn’t make sense.
Ma was worried, too. Finally I heard her say, “Pop, is Sam right about them entertaining us? I mean, if they really want to keep this place a secret, wouldn’t they maybe — uh —”
“No, they wouldn’t,” I answered, maybe a bit snappishly. That wasn’t what I was worried about, though.
I looked down at that new and perfect road, and there was something about it I didn’t like. I diagonaled over to the curb and walked along that, looking down at the greenish soil beyond, but there wasn’t much to see except more holes and more bugs like the
one I’d seen back at the Bon Ton restaurant.
Maybe they weren’t cockroaches, unless the cinema company had brought them. But they were near enough like cockroaches for all practical purposes.
And they still didn’t have propellors or wheels or bowties or feathers. They were just plain cockroaches.
I stepped off the paving and tried to step on one or two of them, but they got away and got down holes. They were plenty fast and shifty on their feet.
I got back on the road and walked with Ma. When she asked, “What were you doing?” I answered, “Nothing.”
Ellen was walking along not talking, and keeping her face a studious blank. I could guess what she was thinking, and I wished there was something could be done about it. The only thing I could think of was to decide to stay on Earth a while at the end of the trip and give her a chance to get over Johnny by meeting a lot of her young sprigs. Maybe even finding one she liked.
Johnny was walking along in a daze. He was gone, all right, and he’d fallen with awful suddenness, like guys like that always do. Oh, maybe it wasn’t love but was just infatuation, but right now he probably didn’t know what planet he was on.
We were over the first rise now, out of sight of Sam’s tent.
“Pop, did you see any movie cameras around?” Ma asked suddenly.
“Nope, but those things cost millions. They don’t leave them setting around loose when they’re not being used.”
Ahead of us was the front of that restaurant. It looked funny as the devil from a side view, walking toward it from this direction. Nothing in sight but that, and green clay hills, and the crazy street we were walking on.
There weren’t any cockroaches on the street. Seemed as though they never got up on it or crossed it.
When I spoke to Johnny, he didn’t seem to hear me, and I decided not to say it because I didn’t know what I was going to say. There was still that something knocking at my mind. Something that made less sense than anything else.
It got stronger and stronger and it was driving me as crazy as it was. I got to wishing I had another drink. Sirius A was getting down toward the horizon, but it was still plenty hot.
I even began to wish I had a drink of water. Ma looked tired, too. “Let’s stop for a rest, we’re about halfway back,” I said to her.
We stopped. It was right in front of the Bon Ton, and I looked up at the sign and grinned. “Johnny, will you go in and order dinner for us?” I asked our precise young man.
He saluted and replied, “Yes, sir,” then started for the door. He suddenly got kind of red in the face and stopped. I chuckled, but I didn’t rub it in by saying anything else.
Ma and Ellen sat down on the curb.
I walked around back of the restaurant front and it hadn’t changed any. Smooth like glass on the other side. The same cockroach was still by the same hole.
I said, “Hello, there,” but it didn’t answer, so I tried to step on it but it was too fast for me. I noticed something funny. It started for the hole the second I decided to step on it, even before I had actually moved a muscle.
I went around to the front again, and leaned up against the brick wall. It was nice and solid to lean against.
I took a cigar out of my pocket and started to light it, but I dropped the match, Almost, I knew what was wrong.
Something about Sam Heideman.
“Ma,” I said, and she turned and looked up at me.
“Ma, isn’t Sam Heideman —”
And then, with utterly appalling suddenness, I wasn’t leaning against a wall any more, because the wall just wasn’t there and I was falling backward.
I picked myself up off the greenish clay. Ma and Ellen were getting up, too, from sitting down hard on the ground because the curb they’d been sitting on wasn’t there any more either.
There wasn’t a sign of the street we’d been walking on, or of the Bon Ton restaurant I’d been leaning against. There wasn’t anything but greenish hills like we’d first seen from the door of the Chitterling.
That fall had jolted me plenty, and I was mad. I wanted something to take out my mad on and I looked around to see if my friend the cockroach had gone up in smoke along with the wall and the street. He hadn’t. I tried for him again and missed again.
Then I looked around at the others. Ma looked as mad as I felt. She was rubbing herself where she’d landed on the ground. Johnny looked startled and like he wanted to cuss but didn’t know how.
Ellen didn’t look anything. She just looked, down at where the street ought to be and over toward me and where the Bon Ton ought to be, then back toward where we’d come from as though wondering whether the tent was still back there.
“It isn’t,” I said.
Ma asked, “It isn’t what?”
“Isn’t there,” I explained.
Ma glowered at me. “What isn’t where?”
“The tent,” I went on, a bit peeved. “The movie company. The whole shebang. And especially Sam Heideman. It was when I remembered about Sam that the street went out from under us.”
“Remembered what about Sam?”
“He’s dead. Don’t you remember six years ago, in New York, when we were reading some old copies of Interplanetary Variety and came across his obit? Sam Heideman’s dead, so he wasn’t there. None of it was there. And the minute I realized that, they pulled it out from under us.”
“They? What do you mean, they, Pop Wherry? Who is they?”
“You mean who are they?” I said, but the look Ma gave me made me wince. “Let’s not talk here,” I went on. “Let’s get back to the ship as quick as we can, first. You can lead us there, Johnny, without the street?”
He nodded, forgetting to salute or “sir” me. We started off, none of us talking.
After we got to where the end of the street had been, we could see our footprints, and the going was easy. We passed the rise where the purple bush had been that the birds with propellers had been flying around, but the birds weren’t there now. Neither was the purple bush.
I had a pretty good hunch, too, that we wouldn’t see any more elephant-sized ostriches in bow ties. We didn’t.
But the Chitterling was there, thank heaven. We saw it from the last rise, and it was just as we’d left it. It looked like home, and we started to walk faster.
I opened the door and stood aside for Ma and Ellen to go in first. Ma had just got her foot on the first rung when we heard the voice. It said, “We bid you farewell.”
I looked around — all of us looked around — but there wasn’t anybody or anything doing the talking. Well, there hadn’t been any street either. Or one-sided restaurant or propeller-birds.
“We bid you farewell, too. And the hell with you,” I answered, letting ’em know I meant it.
I motioned to Ma to go on into the ship. The sooner I was out of this place, the better I’d like it.
But the voice said: “Wait,” and there was something about it that made us wait. “We wish to explain, so you will not return.”
Nothing had been further from my mind, but I said, “Why not?”
“Your civilization is not compatible with ours. We have studied your minds to make sure. We projected images from images we found in your minds, to study your reactions to them. Our first images, our thought projections, were confused. But we understood your minds well by the time you reached the farthest point of your walk. We were able to project beings similar to yourselves.”
“Sam Heideman, yeah,” I said. “But how about the da — the woman? She couldn’t have been in the memory of any of us because we didn’t know her.”
“She was a composite — what you would call an idealization. That, however, does not matter. By studying you, we learned that your civilization concerns itself with things, ours with thoughts. Neither of us has anything to offer the other. No good could come through interchange whereas much harm might. Our planet has no material resources that would interest your race.”
I had to agree to that,
looking out over that monotonous rolling green clay. It supported those tumbleweedlike bushes, a few of them, but didn’t look as though it would raise anything else. As for minerals, I hadn’t even seen a pebble.
“Right you are,” I shouted back. “Any planet that raises nothing but tumbleweeds and cockroaches can keep itself, as far as we are concerned. So —” Then something dawned on me. “Hey, just a minute. There must be something else besides weeds and roaches, or who the hell am I talking to?”
“You are talking,” replied the voice, “to what you call cockroaches, which is another point of incompatibility between us. To be more precise, you are talking to a thought-projected voice, but we are projecting it. And let me assure you of one thing — that you are as physically repugnant to us as we are to you.”
I looked down then and saw them, three of them, ready to pop in holes if I made a move. Back inside the ship, I said, “Johnny, blast off.”
He saluted and said, “Yes, sir,” and went into the pilot’s compartment and shut the door. His face had been studiously blank. He didn’t come out until we were on automatic course with Sirius just a dwindling star behind us. Ellen had gone to her room. Ma and I were playing cribbage.
“May I go off duty, sir?” Johnny asked and walked stiffly to his room when I answered, “Sure.”
After a while Ma and I turned in. A while after that we heard the noises. I got up and went to investigate.
I came back grinning, “Everything’s okay, Ma,” I said. “It’s Johnny Lane. He’s as drunk as a hoot owl.” And I pinched Ma playfully.
“Ouch, you old fool,” she sniffed. “I’m sore there from the curb disappearing from under me. And what’s wonderful about Johnny getting drunk? Are you?”
“No,” I admitted, regretfully maybe, “But Ma — he told me to go to blazes. And without saluting. Me, the owner of the ship.”
Ma just looked at me. Sometimes women are smart, but sometimes they’re pretty dumb.
“Listen, he isn’t going to keep on getting drunk. This is just an occasion. Can’t you see what happened to his pride and his dignity?”
Space On My Hands Page 15
