Oh, yes—it sounds good. And we felt the triumphant vanity of it. But maybe it is an over-simplification. That path to the future is a tightrope in more ways than one. Everything is a gamble. And the bigger goal—not just Mars—was far, far off. Not just cities in the star-systems. But dreams that we couldn't clearly see.
Immortality—cosmic greatness to which we knew that only the minds of our distant descendants could ever be equal. We were still too primitive. Still, we were on the right track and might win, where the Asteroidians and Martians had failed. We'd seen their ruined and deserted fortresses—triumphs of technology that had not been enough.
Maybe our greatest encouragement was the fabulous sum that was paid just for motion-picture rights of what we would see on Mars. Aside from food, comfort and love, nothing is easier to sell, even to the timidest stay-at-home, than high romance.
Our luck held. We left the Moon in a blaze of atomic fire. Several months were spent hurtling in a great arc that joined two planetary orbits. We laughed, we speculated, we worried, we cursed, we grew bored—but Mars swelled to a great murky opal, at once ugly and beautiful, and we landed in the deepest part of Syrtis Major just as we had intended. Ah, but we were a proud lot then, looking back at our conscious determination, courage and skill]
They say that pride goeth before a fall. And so, by a little oversight somewhere, it happened. Maybe in space, under the electro-magnetic emanations of the sun, or even by the friction of our ship's hull with the atmosphere of two worlds, we acquired an electric charge, which became the cause of a hot spark just as we touched the Martian soil. We'll never know just what was the cause.
Ever try to imagine a flash-fire inside a space-ship, where all your stores and your oxygen are sealed up? We could have all died very quickly. Eleven of us did. The rest of us got out of the ship in space-suits, most of us burned in various degrees. But were we any better off?
To the individual death is the end of the universe. The triumph of now and the triumphs of the far future can't matter much. And all we were, here on the Red Planet, was a bunch of blundering fools, as good as dead, without the best part of our supplies.
No, Mars isn't dead like the Moon. The sky we stared at was not black but deep blue. Go to a fifty-thousand-foot altitude on Earth and you've got about the same air-pressure—but still a lot more oxygen than on Mars. Want to try to breathe that thin desiccated atmosphere, even though a comfortable noon-day temperature of nearly seventy degrees might encourage you?
Nope—you're not built right—you'd be the devil's own fool. The Martians are gone—they aren't there anymore to keep that atmosphere healthy with their science.
Colonel Kopplin was yelling, "Get the stuff outl Got to salvage what we can!" And those of us who were able were trying to obey. The fire was out soon, smothered by the Martian air mostly. But almost all of our oxygen supply was gone. And our water tank had been ripped open by the explosion of a big oxygen flask, weakened by the heat. The last of the precious liquid dribbled away into the powdery soil.
At last we stood panting and helpless. Inside myself I was saying, "Good-by, Jan. Good-by, dreams."
The scene around us, I guess, was beautiful. Ruins were everywhere—fused down to lumpy masses of glassy stuff, millions of years ago, by atomic heat in that last war. And everything was overgrown with blue-green papery vegetation, that stirred idly in a thin breeze. The sea-bottom that was Syrtis Major spread for miles all around and far off in the sunlight to the east we could see the ochre line of the desert.
"To find water is our only chance," Kopplin was saying. "We've still got the equipment to electrolyze it—to free the oxygen in it to breathe. But where, short of the polar regions, will you find water on a planet whose remaining total supply wouldn't more than fill a couple of our Great Lakes?"
"We could find the lowest ground here," Frank growled. "Try to dig a well."
Vasiliev nodded. He was a plucky little man. Maybe we were all plucky or we wouldn't have been where we were. But what good was that against grinding homesickness—besides all the rest of our misfortunes?
But we began to get the necessary equipment together. We figured we had maybe five hours' air-supply left. A space-suit can be equipped for a long jaunt afield. But running for your life from a fire you can't always be fully prepared. A seal is made imperfectly. An air-purifier lacks adjustment. And if you've got anything to share part of it goes to pals who aren't so fortunate as you.
Wishful thinking at a time of despair, they say, can produce strange delusions. So now I saw a ghost stepping out from behind some weird Martian shrubbery. Lord knows that was all I could think then—because I couldn't know the simple train of events that had made the impossible true.
Yeah, I saw Joe Whiteskunk. And he wasn't even wearing space-armor. But from a disc strapped to the top of his head a faintly luminous aura flowed down over his ragged shirt and dungarees. A Martian invention—I didn't even think about it then. But that was the way it was. An aura which took up all the functions of our clumsy space-suits—protection from cold, air-purification, maintenance of pressure.
He was surrounded by a tough bubble of energy.
"Hi, Dave," he said and his voice was hoarse and rustling and dry. "Yup—me. Joe." He was as thin and brown and withered as a dry root. And he staggered a little. But his eyes were clear. Funny how his voice reached me through my helmet phones though I saw no transmitter. But that's ancient Martian science.
"No water down in valley," Joe croaked. "Little spring close by too small. Too many men. Water always bitter. So what? Sometimes I smell water higher up toward desert. I never look though. Now do, eh? Glad to see you boys again. Hi, Frank."
He showed us the twenty-foot hole he'd dug. There were a couple of spoonfuls of brackish muck at its bottom. Wildly we dug further, only to find dry sand into which the trickle vanished.
"Just spoil spring," Joe grumbled. "Now we go look."
"Toward the desert?" Kopplin growled. "That's against both science and common sensel I'll take a digging party down to lower ground."
"Okay," I said. "Fair enough. Just on the chance that Joe is right I'll take another party and go with him."
We were too intent on water and survival even to ask how Joe happened to be here, even though it seemed more impossible than any miracle. But I got around to inquiry as our group—which included Vasiliev—started out.
"Gonna tell us about you, Joe?" I asked.
"Sure," he said. "I found Mars space-ship on Moon. Nothing broke. I crawl inside. Press wrong button. Ship start for home. Big city here once in this valley. Home to machine that
think, inside ship. Ship over there—maybe five miles." Joe grinned.
Far off I saw the burnished hull gleaming in the sunshine. "How do you live, Joe?" I demanded.
"Had my supplies. Had space-tent," Joe answered. "Now eat hard fruit. And big slow bugs. Taste good when hungry. No game. Plenty gold ornaments though—and stuff for houses. Vases—very nice. Maybe now we start business, eh, Dave?"
"You're crazy, Joe," I growled.
Under Joe's guidance, we dug for water. Twice we got nothing. But the third time, fourteen feet down, we got a muddy swirl of brackish stuff that widened to a pool. It was all that we needed. Distillation could get the mineral out of it, if we weren't squeamish about what we drank.
By radio we learned that Kopplin's party was still looking. They hadn't found anything.
Little Vasiliev laughed gleefully. "I guess there are neglected branches of science," he said. "About hunches—that is what you call them, is it not? About pigeons finding their way home. About your friend 'smelling' water . . ."
Sure. Joe Whiteskunk is an Indian—probably not quite an ordinary one. Maybe this story is mostly about him. Maybe it's about those deeper sciences. Or about fate and destiny and luck. Or about pride and humbleness. Or how simple life reaches out, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. Or about high romance . . .
I know how Joe managed t
o live alone on Mars. But I don't know how his mind stood it—how he escaped going mad. Maybe, like a primitive thing, he just didn't realize where he was—and that saved him. Maybe his luck was just a matter of being part of nature.
Nature is a word that covers a lot of ground. An atom, an amoeba, a galaxy—and everything in between. But they all must be joined together someway, be in sympathy and understanding. And maybe Joe's flesh is part of that understanding. That's why he always seems to know.
After our misfortunes most of us were fed up with Mars. The romance thinned. We wanted to go home to rest and brag. We could fix up our ship now—or maybe even use the Martian one, refitting it to be a little more comfortable for human occupation.
On my fourth day on Mars I said, "Joe—how would you like to be back on the ranch for a while?"
Joe thought about it. Then he answered, "No go. Stay here. Nice place. Plenty room. You go, Dave." His black eyes were on the distance. "Got plenty business here," he added.
None of us left for over seven months. By then we had a little camp set up—not much different, though far smaller, than Camp Copernicus. Maybe it'll be our first Martian city before long.
I left with the ship—I had to. But Frank stayed, and Vasiliev and a few others. I took Joe's "trade stuff' along. Golden ornaments, plaques, vases, strange carvings, stuff worth an emperor's ransom—because civilized people love high romance and call it beautiful. Does Joe really understand? I wonder.
I've brought Joan, my wife, back to Mars with me. Life goes on. Joe doesn't show up here much anymore. He's browner and more withered than ever. But with the help of decent food he's a lot spryer than he used to be. And his eyes are young. Has he found something like the fountain of youth too? Or is it just that the thirty-eight-percent-of-Earth-norm gravity of Mars is easy on old muscles? Search me.
Yesterday I saw him trudge off again toward the desert. He seems to belong here as much as the tattered Martian plants. I couldn't have believed that possible, once. Joe's a real trail-blazer. He doesn't understand galaxies. Stars are still just little specks in the sky to him.
But there must be a drive and an understanding in his blood and bone and nerves. Perhaps it's a vast primitive yearning. It's the kind of thing that will lead us out to the farthest galaxies, maybe a thousand years from now, if our luck holds. But it's not distance alone. It's grandeur, dimly seen. It's mind, com-
prehension, mystery. Maybe it's a matter of becoming demigods. Who knows? And don't ask me. Dream it up yourself.
Maybe we of Earth will be the ones to do it—though the Martians and the Asteroidians failed.
Ot/T BEYOND the farthermost planet of SoTs system— toward the heart of the galaxy where rich worlds revolve slowly or swiftly about other suns, waiting for the foot of man and the weight of his ambition to change them. What if an explorer discovers a too perfect world? Such a gift from fortune arouses suspicion, not gratitude. Where was the hidden trap, Captain Chang wondered.
Thou Good and Faithful
K. HOUSTON BRUNNER
The big ship eased leisurely out of hyperspace, solidified into reality, and settled with a few prim puffs from its steering jets into an orbit around the planet.
"There it is, captain," said Deeley with pardonable pride.
The captain nodded, pipe clenched between his teeth, and said, T wonder what we'll find here."
In seventy years of wandering he had grown to expect the unexpected.
Around him in the big cabin that tradition insisted on calling the bridge the four senior officers under his command sat at their control desks, from which each co-ordinated the information provided by his particular department. Officially, Deeley's title was Nav; Spinelli's, Engines; Engelhart, Personnel; Adhem, Biological, and Keston, Observation. In practice, these names were pretty elastic.
The planet filled nearly half of the direct viewport with blue-green radiance, dimmed in patches by the presence of two atmosphereless moons which lay like dark stones in a shallow shining pool. Beyond it hung the curtain of ten million stars— a mass of dusky gold, the very center of the galaxy. 102
It didn't yet seem right that there should be stars packed so thick in any planet's sky.
The captain's name was Chang—a good terrestrial name-but he had been raised on New Earth, Alpha Centauri IV, way out towards the rim of the galaxy, where the stars were no more than occasional flecks of gold in the dark velvet of the sky. Here in the neighborhood of the Hub it was different. Here it was the black that pitted the bright.
The world below looked to be a good world, though it was maybe twice as old as Earth. This was an older part of the universe. There were a few brilliant clouds in its atmosphere, and there were wide seas, but not so wide as Earth's, being less than half the surface of the planet. And chlorophyll green shone bright on the spectroscopes.
There were no deserts and no ice-packs.
Behind him, Keston of Observation cleared his throat and said, "Captain, here's the data on the planet."
"Let's have," said Chang.
"Density, mass and surface grav are so close to Earth normal we can't differentiate them. Air's a little thin—about thirteen point six pounds at sea level, I guess—and high on C0and low on oxygen, but only about a per cent each way. Plenty of water vapor—in short, breathable. Forty-five per cent of the surface is ocean. Has a twenty-nine-hour day and about an eleven-month year. It's an older world than Earth, and the pull of the moons and the sun have respectively lengthened the day and shortened the year."
Chang nodded, said, "Is that all?"
"Just about. We haven't made out any evidence of habitation yet, but that'll come if it exists. There's a lot of vegetation-chlorophyll vegetation—both in and out of the sea."
Chang took his pipe out of his mouth and blew smoke. He said, "Good. Tell me if you get anything else, will you."
"Right, sir."
He sucked on his pipe ruminatively, relaxing in his chair before the viewport. A planet matching Earth this close was a find in a million, literally, for an oxygen-high atmosphere was the second most unstable of all possible atmospheres and rarely survived, whereas chlorine-high, hydrogen-high and methane-high were all too common. It could mean retirement and ease for them when the colonists came. They could ask their own price for an acre of ground.
Assuming it was uninhabited and theirs by right of prior discovery, that was, and he felt it might be. This close to the Hub, where the ships that had been so far might be numbered on your fingers, a previous discovery was unlikely, and as for indigenous races, oxygen reactions seemed to build unstable life forms which died quickly. A world twice as old as Earth might once have been inhabited—
But he was basing his judgments on data gathered far away. Too far away. Here, everything might very well be new.
From behind him, Keston said: "Sir, Sandiman thinks he's found signs of habitation on the inner moon."
"Indigenous or planted?" said Chang.
"Can't tell, sir, but I'd advise investigation."
"We'll take a look at it, then," said Chang with decision. "Engines!"
"Sir?" said a quiet voice with a lilting Romance accent. Spinelli had inherited that from an ancestor more than half a millennium ago, back in the days before the races merged.
"Shift us over to the nearer moon," said Chang.
"Sir," said Spinelli.
The viewport changed. For an instant there was the golden glory of stars. Then the barren, airless, pitted face of the inner moon began to show clearly, lit by the reflected light of its primary, and at last hung steady, almost filling the viewport, while they played off its attraction against an antigrav beam. Chang looking it over, said, "Keston, have someone put a 'scope on this port, will you?"
The image blanked for a second before a small section of it reappeared, fantastically bloated, as if it were scant yards away instead of two hundred miles. Keston volunteered, "Sandiman reported something in the crater with its ringwall in three sections—see it?
"
"I see," nodded Chang.
Deeley had got up from his chair and come over to stand behind him. Shortly, he uttered a muffled exclamation and said, "Sir, what's that hut?"
Chang permitted himself a slight smile. "It's rather more than a hut," he said. "From the way it shows up you could put this ship inside it and have room to spare. Looks to me like the top dome—supply lock, maybe—of a pressurized city."
Deeley said, with the disappointment in his voice partly masked by his interest in contacting a new culture, "Then that means a non-indigenous race, doesn't it?"
"Looks like it," nodded Chang, leaning closer to the port. He said in a curious tone, "Keston, have the magnification stepped up, and tell me what's odd about that dome."
The picture again swelled enormously, and Keston said, with more than a hint of relief in his voice, "Locks are open, sir, inner and outer, and there are a number of meteor rents in the roof."
"I thought it looked odd. That means we needn't expect much trouble from that quarter. Is it the only one on the moon?"
After a pause, "Yes, sir," reported Keston. "And we haven't found any signs of habitation on the planet, either. Hardesty thinks he's found a city site, but it's so overgrown it equally well could be a natural formation. No sign of cities or even roads."
"Good," grunted Chang. "Spinelli, put us down within shouting distance of that dome, will you?"
"Right, sir," Spinelli answered.
His viewport blanked for a moment as they took the 'scope off it, and then relit to show the distant moon rising rapidly to meet them. At this range he could quite easily make out the dome with his naked eye.
Then the crater with the triply split wall filled the port, and the big ship settled with hardly a jolt on a level surface fused and scarred by the hot jets of rockets landing and taking off.
The image in the port stilled, and was that of the ringwall outlined against the stars.
Andre Norton (ed) Page 10
