“Might be interesting. Unmanned vehicle. Worthless target. A small asteroid. A baby Sun?”
“I don’t know, Zeb. Nor do I have apparatus to spare. It took me three years to build this one.”
“So we wait a few years. Jake? Air has mass.”
“That worried me also. But any mass, other than degenerate mass, is mostly empty space. Air—Earth sea-level air—has about a thousandth the density of the human body. The body is mostly water and water accepts air readily. I can’t say that it has no effect—twice I’ve thought that my temperature went up a trifle at transition or translation in atmosphere but it could have been excitement. I’ve never experienced caisson disease from it. Has any of us felt discomfort?”
“Not me, Jake.”
“I’ve felt all right, Pop,” I agreed.
“I got space sick. ’Til Deety cured it,” Aunt Hilda added.
“So did I, my darling. But that was into vacuo and could not involve the phenomenon.”
“Pop,” I said earnestly, “we weren’t hurt; we don’t have to know why. A basic proposition of epistemology, bedrock both for the three basic statements of semantics and for information theory, is that an observed fact requires no proof. It simply is, self-demonstrating. Let philosophers worry about it; they haven’t anything better to do.”
“Suits me!” agreed Hilda. “You big-brains had Sharpie panting. I thought we were going to take a walk?”
“We are, dear,” agreed my husband. “Right after those steaks.”
XVIII
Zebadiah
Four Dagwoods later we were ready to start walkabout. Deety delayed by wanting to repeat her test by remote control. I put my foot down. “No!”
“Why not, my captain? I’ve taught Gay a program to take her straight up ten klicks. It’s G, A, Y, B, O, U, N, C, E—a new fast-escape with no execution word necessary. Then I’ll recall her by B, U, G, O, U, T. If one works via walkie-talkie, so will the second. It can save our lives, it can!”
“Uh—” I went on folding tarps and stowing my sleeping bag. The female mind is too fast for me. I often can reach the same conclusion; a woman gets there first and never by the route I have to follow. Besides that, Deety is a genius.
“You were saying, my captain?”
“I was thinking. Deety, do it with me aboard. I won’t touch the controls. Check pilot, nothing more.”
“Then it won’t be a test.”
“Yes, it will. I promise, Cub Scout honor, to let it fall sixty seconds. Or to three klicks H-above-G, whichever comes first.”
“These walkie-talkies have more range than ten kilometers even between themselves. Gay’s reception is much better.”
“Deety, you trust machinery; I don’t. If Gay doesn’t pick up your second command—sunspots, interference, open circuit, anything—I’ll keep her from crashing.”
“But if something else goes wrong and you did crash, I would have killed you!”
So we compromised. Her way. The exact test she had originally proposed.
I wasted juice by roading Gay Deceiver a hundred meters, got out, and we all backed off. Deety said into her walkie-talkie, “Gay Deceiver … Bug Out!” <>
Not even an implosion Splat! Perhaps her non-spherical shape caused acoustic cancel-out by interference. Perhaps I would have heard something if I had been standing right by her. Or perhaps not. Magic.
So we started out. The sun was still high despite two engineering tests, considerable yak-yak, and making and eating Dagwoods. We headed for the nearest point of the old shoreline (if that was what it was), a hill that stuck out from the rest, perhaps two kilometers away and half a kilometer above the “sea bottom,” judging by eye.
We were armed and in open patrol, and I was back in command. Not my idea—Sharpie’s. She had asked, “Lifeboat rules, Captain?”
I had answered, “Uh …” Jake had said, “Certainly!” and Deety had echoed, “Of course!” So I shrugged and accepted it.
“I’ll head for that nearest hill. When I’ve gone two hundred paces, I’ll raise my arm, and you, Hilda, start after me. Try to hold that interval; I won’t hurry. Jake and Deety, start at the same time, but angle off to right and left and drop back. Try to form an equilateral triangle, with me at point, Deety and Jake right and left drag, and Hilda spang in middle. Talk only via walkie-talkie and keep it low; the range is short. Don’t chatter, but report anything you see. Address the person you are talking to before you say what you have to say—keep it brief and always use ‘Over’ and ‘Roger and Out!’ This is a drill as well as sightseeing; we may do this on many planets … and this looks like an easy place to practice. Questions?”
“Captain,” asked Jake, “how long are we going to stay out?”
“I intend to have us back inside while the sun is still an hour high. I hope that we will reach the top of that hill and look around from there. But if I’ve misjudged the distance—or how fast the sun moves through the sky—I’ll head back without reaching the hill. At a trot, if necessary. Or a dead run. However fast Hilda can move. But we’re going to be inside the car and buttoned up before sunset. Uh, Deety, got the time figured out here?”
“No, sir, not yet. I could make a guess by assuming that it matches Mars. But I don’t know that it does.”
“So don’t assume that it does. Look back over your shoulder occasionally, and also watch your own shadow, and don’t hesitate to tell me to turn back—you have, by far, the best time-sense of any of us.”
“Yessir.”
“Any more questions? Hilda, watch for my signal.” I started off, feeling like both Lewis and Clark—the comedy team, not the explorers. I was dressed in a pair of Jake’s boxing shorts because they were more comfortable and cooler than the swim briefs I had worn as my first “Martian” costume. The rest was mostly sword belt and that wonderful sword. But the belt also supported walkie-talkie and gun, a police special of the caliber still called “thirty-eight.” It did not have the punching power of the still older army automatic Jake carried on his Sam Browne opposite his saber—but I had hand-loaded the ammo and had converted the bullets into illegal (and highly effective) dumdums.
So Jake and I were equipped effectively alike. Hilda was in the center because she was armed solely with a hunting knife mounted on one of Deety’s belts. Hilda had never learned to shoot, but we (and a dead alien) knew how well she handled a knife.
Deety was armed three ways: a knife at her belt, her Skoda fléchette pistol on the other side, and her own shotgun, a 12-gauge pump gun, with spare cartridges in her belt. Jake assured me she was a “natural” with it.
However, she had nothing but bird shot, so her range was less than that of Jake’s pistol, and her striking power much less. I had placed her as right flank drag, but being the point farthest from the hills.
In putting on belts, weapons, and walkie-talkies, our ladies had not removed one bauble of their barbaric jewelry. They delighted in being dressed “Barsoomian style,” and there seemed to be no reason not to go along with their whim. Jewelry did not interfere with weapons—so why not? Bare skin seemed appropriate, too. This place might be cold at night, but it was warm once the sun was up and rather too warm now, mid-afternoon.
I had fretted about shoes. Hilda’s total choice lay between tennis shoes that had already started a blister, and dancing slippers with high heels. Deety did have stout country shoes—but she had said, “Zebadiah, I don’t need shoes. If you give me orders as our commander, I’ll wear them. But you’ll make me less able to defend myself.”
(For an absolute monarch, I win very few arguments.)
Jake and I each had field boots. I got as far as putting mine on and lacing one up. But my feet seemed to have spread during two weeks barefooted. And they were hot. I thought about the horrid case of jungle rot I had gotten wearing them in Kenya—no doubt fungus was still infecting them. I took them off. Jake re-stowed them—and his own.
Besides, I had found it difficult to stay balanced in
them. We hadn’t had the time to jury-rig a way to measure local gravity (easy with a spring scale—we had no spring scale), but Barsoom’s gravity was certainly low, surprisingly low for its air pressure (about that of Snug Harbor, according to my pressure altimeter). But low gravity is both an advantage … and a snare. All our reflexes, all our walking, running, and jumping habits, are based on “mass equals weight.” When one kilogram mass weighs only three or four grams (my guesstimate), one can jump quite high—but it is safer to crawl like a baby.
Ten days on Luna with the Aussies had given me practice in one-sixth gee—but only old Moon-hands lope in Lunar gravity: new chums use a clumsy two-footed hop. (That time on Luna is not part of my “official” record. There was a spare seat; my ADF CO gave me two weeks’ leave and looked the other way—Aussies are born non-reg; they enjoy breaking rules.)
I had mastered the art of walking on Barsoom—barefooted. But I suspected that those stiff field boots would trip me.
Our midget-sized walkie-talkies were so small and light that they could be carried in-hand, strapped to an arm, placed in a pocket, hung on a belt, or slung around the neck. Short range, they could be hand-held; for long range, an ear button and a throat mic gave them around ten times the reach. Jake hung his on his Sam Browne and ran the wire up the digital strap, taped it at his shoulder. Seeing what her father had done, Deety placed hers on its shoulder strap, then belted over it; Hilda and I imitated her. It left us all equipped for long range, both hands free, at what was, in fact, short range—okay with the gain down to minimum, but we could still hear each other swallow. It did show that our party could spread out, long distance if need be, yet still be “together.”
We needed water canteens. The only suppliers were millions of kilometers and ten universes away.
I almost got cross-eyed trying to scan terrain ahead while watching where I put my feet—not only because low gravity and bouncy ground cover made me unsteady, but also through watching for the local equivalents of sidewinders or Gila monsters—which might look like rocks or lox. Sure, we had gotten nary an insect bite at breakfast—which proved that we had gotten nary an insect bite at breakfast. We were totally unsophisticated in terra, utterly incognito; some “pretty little flower” might be more deadly than a bushmaster.
Not that I let it worry me; worry itself is a killer. But I was super-cautious by intent. We needed an armored Land Rover, or a tank. What we had were shanks’ ponies and scratch weapons. We did have a fast, armed-and-armored vehicle—Gay Deceiver—but with no way to juice her, her power must be conserved for emergency maneuvers.
In romances about interstellar exploration there is always a giant mother ship with inexhaustible power, plus long-range and versatile landing craft.
Somehow we weren’t doing this “by the book.” We should go back and re-equip. But home base was destroyed and we were “dead” and “the book” thrown away. We had no choice but to face the unknown with what we had. I trudged ahead.
While trying to scan that hill ahead, I tangled my feet in ground cover, tripped, and did a short, brilliant pas-à-seul that would have fetched applause to a clown in an ice show. Instead, I applauded myself.
Hilda’s voice answered, “Why, Cap’n Zebbie! Such language.”
“Pipe down,” I answered grumpily. Thereafter I watched each step for fifty paces, stopped, searched ahead a second—and repeat. Endlessly.
During one such eyes-down interval I felt the ground tremble, felt it despite the spongy turf. Earthquake? Marsquake? Barsoomquake? I stopped to look.
Around the shoulder of that hill was charging at me a many-legged monster midway between a dinosaur and a rhinoceros that had had too many vitamins; astride this nightmare was a green giant twice as tall as I was and much uglier. His face had a built-in unfriendly look, not improved by eyeteeth that were tusks curling up almost to his eyebrows.
Couched at the ready in his two right hands was a telephone pole, sharp at one end—that end was aimed at my belly button. He was brandishing a big rifle in his upper left hand, but his attention was fixed on making shish kebab of me.
This takes many words to describe, but it was burned instantly into my brain in living holocolor—while my rudely awakened subconscious was tearing around inside my skull, beating on the bone, and screaming, “Le’ me out o’ here! Le’ me out o’ here! Look, it’s all a mistake! I’m not a hero; I don’t belong here—you got the wrong guy! Zeb! Zeb! Wake up! We’re in the wrong dream!”
I said bitterly to myself, “Sharpie, this is the last time I’ll let you name a planet—and this looks like the last time.”—while another part of my much-split personality was considering: “How did the other Captain John Carter—the one without the ‘Z’—handle this type of situation? Keep cool, boy, don’t panic—use the tested tactic. Charge straight toward it and jump! Jump high—this is Barsoom—remember? You jump right over it. High! Stab his gun arm and, as you twist in the air to withdraw, slash at his upper lance arm—try to! You’ll land beyond him and that beast is too big to turn fast—so jump again and slash again at his lance arms. Take him—then worry about his mount; it’s big, but stupid.”
So the red haze of battle veiled my steel gray eyes and I charged, sword at port and shouting my war cry: “Kartago delenda est! Smerts y Rosroushen yah! Illegitimi Nihil Carborundum!”—and leapt.
And caught my toe in that damned crabgrass, went arse over teacup, and barely managed to roll aside as the pads of that preposterous pachyderm pounded past.
Breath was knocked out of me; I fought to get it back as I got to my feet—and saw a sight tragic and heroic: little Sharpie swarming up a giant green leg like a kitten up a tree and attempting to take that giant apart with her knife.
Nothing else for it—the clean-limbed fighting man charged again. “Allah il Allah Akbar!”
If I thrust right under that beast’s tail, would it confuse the situation enough for me to do something about Sharpie? The giant had let go his lance with his upper right hand, had her by the wrist and was keeping her from poking his eyes, while he held her waist with his lower left hand, almost spanning it.
He turned his head to look at me, and lisped around his tusks: “Oh, I say, old chap, do speak English. If you know it.”
I stopped charging the quick way—tripped again and picked myself up. “Certainly, I do! Put her down!”
“But I cahn’t, you know. She’s trying to blind me. And do please tell your friends to cease firing. It makes the thoats quite nervous. Quite.”
A bullet kicked up leaves and dust between me and the giant, followed a split second by the crack! of an old-style automatic. I flinched—when you hear the bullet before you hear the gun, you are on the wrong end of the firing.
Jake was about a hundred meters away, on one knee, steadying his weapon with two hands. “Cease firing!” The very different Bang! of a shotgun sounded. I looked under the snout of the thoat, saw Deety standing, gun pointed toward us.
“Don’t blast the mic,” Jake answered, blasting the mic. “Did you give ‘cease firing’?”
I lowered my voice. “Yes. Cease firing, both of you. You might hit Hilda. Both of you, stay where you are. I’ll try to negotiate.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
I heard a neighing squeal behind me, looked around—and almost fainted. I was staring up into the red, piggish eyes of another thoat. This was a bad angle to appreciate one. It was pawing the ground and rocking, apparently anxious to trample me. Then I became aware that there were three of them—three thoats, three green giants, each one uglier than both of the others. Apparently they had attacked in Vee formation, and I had been too occupied to see the wing men. A fighter pilot can get his tail shot off making that mistake.
I didn’t cringe—professional heroes can’t afford to show fear. I simply moved around to the front, rather quickly, of the giant who had Hilda—but did not stand directly in front of this thoat. Hilda was struggling, still trying to fit him out with tin cup and
white cane.
“Sharpie!”
“Yes, Cap’n! Give me a hand!”
“Sharpie, I’ve got to negotiate this. Flag of truce and so forth.”
“Half a second while I poke his eyes out and he’ll have to negotiate!”
“Sharpie, there are three of them!”
“You knock ’em down, I’ll knife ’em!”
“Hilda! Hilda, my darling,” came Jake’s voice by walkie-talkie. “Do what the captain says! Please!”
Hilda stopped struggling. “Zebbie, did you say three?”
“Look around. Count ’em. But they aren’t trying to hurt us.”
Hilda looked around, counted. “Tell this smelly ape to take his dirty paws off me.”
“What a rude remark from a lady.” (It sounded more like “wude wemark.”) “Apes are a dirty white. And utterly beastly. Not human.”
“She didn’t mean to insult you, sir. She’s quite upset. Hilda, if this gentleman lets you—slowly!—lower your arm, will you sheath your knife and let him place you on the ground?”
“Cap’n Zebbie, are you sure that’s what you want me to do?”
“Sharpie, it’s the only thing to do. He doesn’t want to hurt you—but he doesn’t want his eyes put out, either.”
“Well … will he say ‘King’s X’?”
“I’m sure he will. Sir, ‘King’s X’ means ‘flag of truce.’ No more hostilities.”
“But there were no hothtilitieth until you attacked uth. We were thimply twying to give you the formal theremony of welcome when you yelled at me and she attacked me while I wath dithtracted!” (His lisp had become worse under grievance—but you try saying the letter “s” with both thumbs in the corners of your mouth. Go ahead—try it. When not excited, he compensated rather well. I won’t spell it out again.)
He added, “Will she say ‘King’s X’?”
“Say it, Hilda—and cross your heart.”
They both said it, but the green giant could not cross his heart; all four of his hands were busy. He lowered her wrist, holding it well away from him, until she could reach her belt. She sheathed her hunting knife. He started to lift her gently down; she shrugged loose and jumped, landed lightly. I put an arm around her, she started to tremble. I said, “There, there, honey—it’s over. You were magnificent!”
The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes Page 18
