Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (166 page)

“We don’t know that Martians are human beings. The chances are a million to one that they aren’t. It is very unlikely that evolution, operating on so different a planet, could produce a being even remotely resembling a man. We don’t even know that the people of Mars use speech as we use it. Old Faithful certainly is very intelligent, yet the way he has fumbled blunderingly with our code seems to indicate that even a faint conception of vocal speech is something new and strange to him.

“Those are some of the gaps, but there may be sinister similarities between Earthmen and Martians.

“Who knows but that something darker lies behind what we think is friendly interest in us? Sometimes conquest is more satisfying than commerce. We can’t tell.’’ Professor Waters paused.

“Making it extra strong, aren’t you, doc?” Jack put in.

“I guess I am, and now I think I’ll do a little news-spreading.” The professor strode to the desk.

“Human or not, I hope the Martians are handsome,” Yvonne confided impishly to Jack.

“And I hope they’re not, darling,” he replied, putting his arm affectionately about her waist. He was about to add something more when what the girl’s father was saying into the telephone riveted their attention.

“Long distance? I’m calling Washington. I want to speak directly to Mr. Grayson, the Secretary of War. Strange call? Perhaps. But put it through.”

Before dawn all the observatories of Earth had begun their watch.

V

Far away on the Red Planet, the work of Number 774 went steadily forward. Then came the night when all was ready except for one thing. A powerful urge, the roots of which are deeply implanted in the dominant forms of life on both Earth and Mars, and perhaps the whole universe, was calling him to a city at the joining place of four canals, far to the east. In that urge there was a pathetic something, perfectly understandable by human standards.

The bright stars reeled dizzily before Number 774 as he swooped out over the desert on the wings of the ornithopter that bore him and sped eastward. He must be cautious, but above all he must hurry.

An hour or so slipped by. The Martian’s big eyes, keen and catlike, picked out in the broad cleft of a canal a gigantic angular shape, looming dim and uncertain in the gloom. Inconspicuous as a drifting shadow, he settled toward it. The talons of his automaton found a metal panel that slipped aside at a touch. The green glow of the immense well thus revealed dropped away into deserted obscurity. In a moment he was floating down it, past myriads of openings, from which radiated the labyrinthine tunnels of the buried Martian city.

He entered one of these passages and followed it for perhaps a mile, until he came to a vast chamber, pervaded by a moist, humid heat. The floor was covered with thousands of boxes of clear crystal; and in each box was a purple gob of something feeble and jellylike and alive.

Aided perhaps by some Martian numeral system, Number 774 found his way to the box he sought. At his touch the lid opened. He had dismounted from his automaton, and now, creeping forward, he thrust a slender appendage into the crystal case.

A score of nerve filaments, fine, almost, as human hair, darted out from the chitinous shell that protected them and roved caressingly over the lump of protoplasm. Immediately it responded to the gentle touch of the strange creature that had sired it. Its delicate integument quivered, and a thin pseudopod oozed up from its jellylike form and enveloped the nerve filaments of Number 774. For minutes the two remained thus, perfectly motionless.

It was a bizarre travesty of a touching and perfectly human situation; yet its utter strangeness by Earthly standards robbed it of some of its pathos. No words were spoken, no sign of affection that a terrestrial being could interpret was given; and yet perhaps the exchange of feeling and thought and emotion between parent and offspring was far more complete than anything of the kind possible on Earth.

Number 774 did not forget caution. Perhaps it was intuition that informed him that someone was coming. Quickly, yet without haste, he regained his automaton, replaced the lid on the crystal box, and slipped quietly away into the luminescent obscurity of the tunnel. In a few minutes he had safely reached the open of the canal bed. Broad wings flapped, and the starlit night swallowed him up.

As he hurried back toward his hidden valley, he saw the silvery green speck of Earth dip beneath the western horizon. The sight of it must have aroused a turmoil of forebodings within him; for absently, as if he were already facing unknown horrors in mortal combat, he moved a small switch, and in response a jagged flash of flame leaped from an apparatus carried on a long arm of his flying automaton. Where the bolt struck, the desert sand turned molten.

Above, the comet glowed, pallid and frosty and swollen. It was very near to Mars now.

Having reached his valley, Number 774 descended into the pit. A silvery thing that was illy defined in the uncertain light loomed over him. A door opened and closed, and Number 774 was alone and busy amid a bewildering array of machinery.

There came a blinding flash of incandescence, and a roar that sounded like the collision of two worlds; then a shrill, tortured, crackling whistle. The pit glowed white-hot, and the silvery thing was gone. Above the pit, towering many miles into the sky, was an immense jetted plume of vapor, shining rosy with heat. It would be many minutes before that huge gaseous cloud would cool sufficiently to be invisible.

The body of Number 774 was battered and torn and broken; the terrific acceleration was crushing him; consciousness was slipping, even though he was exerting a tremendous effort of will to cling to it. In a few minutes it would not matter if he did go out, but now there were controls to watch and to handle. If they were not manipulated properly everything he had done was for naught.

But the blackness of oblivion was closing in. He struggled valiantly to master himself and to fight through the gathering gloom that was misting his vision and clouding his mind. Though his whole being cried out for a cessation of torturing effort, still he kept fiercely at his task. There was too much at stake. That little globe there—it was glowing red when it should glow violet. It must be attended to. The craft was wobbling, and it must not wobble. A trifling adjustment of delicate stabilizers would fix that, if he could only somehow make the adjustment.

A dribble of sticky, oozy fluid welled from a wound in Number 774’s side. His limbs, some of them broken, fumbled awkwardly and inefficiently with the complicated controls. He was gasping, and all the while his glazing eyes remained fixed grimly on the form of the comet, toward which he and the strange craft he had built were hurtling. Could he reach it? He must!

VI

On Earth, Professor Waters, his daughter, and his young engineer, watched and waited. It was a tense, grueling task, heavy-laden with monotony, a thousand weird imaginings, and a horde of questions, none of which could be answered with any certainty.

They were uncertain whether to be fearful of the unknown thing whose approach they sensed, or to be exultant. They did not even know whether their vigil was just a huge nerve-racking practical joke which their fancies had played upon them.

Time dragged with torturing slowness. Tardy seconds became minutes, tedious minutes were built up into hours, and hours became days that seemed like centuries. And over the rest of the world, the vigil was much the same.

On the ninth day after the last flickering message had come from Mars, Professor Waters had seen through his telescope, on the surface of the Red Planet, a fine dot of white light that, after its sudden appearance, faded quickly to red, and then, after a few minutes, disappeared altogether. A few hours later he thought he detected a slight and momentary ripple in the gaseous substance of the comet’s head, which then had just passed Mars on its sunward journey.

Newspaper reporters who had come many miles to this lonely spot in the desert were constantly seeking interviews. The three watchers supplied them with all the information they knew; and at last, tiring of the additional strain of being constantly hounded by these persistent seekers after sensational news, they refused even to grant them admittance into the barbed-wire stockade of the camp.

At last the comet reached its point of closest approach to the Earth. Faint and ashy though it was, low down in the sunlit afternoon heavens, still it was an awesome, impressive object, with its colossal, fan-shaped head and the vast curved sweep of its gigantic ghost-silver tail.

When the desert dusk settled, the visiting wanderer increased a score of times in brilliance and glory. It had now passed the line and was hurtling away. And as yet nothing that would satisfy the eager hopes and fears of the watchers had happened.

The three were standing on the veranda of the little adobe house they inhabited. All of a sudden Doctor Waters’ haggard face relaxed. He sighed heavily.

“I guess that it has been proved that we are all of us fools,” he said wearily. “There hasn’t been much of anything to reward us for our pains.” His glance toward Jack Cantrill was slightly apologetic. “I think I’ll go to bed,” he added abruptly.

Jack’s rather good-looking face twisted into a rueful smile. “Bed isn’t at all a bad idea,” he admitted. “I feel as though I could snooze a week straight without waking up. Well, anyway, if we’re fools, I’m the biggest one, because I started all this.” He looked at the old man and then at the girl. “Forgive me, Yvonne?” he queried good-humoredly.

“No,’’ she replied with mock seriousness. “Making me lose so much of my beauty sleep like this! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’’ Her little speech was terminated by a faintly amused chuckle, and she pinched his cheek impishly.

It was some hours after they had retired that a faint soughing noise began from somewhere, apparently at a great distance. It was like the sound of a suddenly stiffening night breeze, sweeping through a grove of pine trees. Something that glowed rosy with the heat of atmospheric friction swept in hurting flight across the sky. A mile or so beyond the camp, broad thin flanges of metal shot out from it, and it made a feeble attempt to steady itself and check its almost meteoric speed. It wobbled, then fluttered down weakly. A cloud of dust and sand rose where it smashed into the ground. But there was no human eye to see. For an hour or more it gave no further sign of life or motion.

Yvonne Waters was a light sleeper. Unusual night noises ordinarily aroused her. The momentary soughing rustle caused her to stir, but she did not awaken. Then, toward four in the morning, another disturbance came. It was a faint stretching, creaking, straining sound, that nevertheless held a suggestion of powerful forces acting stealthily.

Instantly Yvonne was wide awake. She sat up in bed, listening. What she heard produced quick and accurate associations in her nimble and cool young mind. A barbed-wire fence would make a creaking, straining noise like that, if something big and powerful were seeking tentatively to force an entrance. The stockade!

Yes; she was right. Presently there came the sharp snap and snarl that told of the sudden parting of a taut wire. Four times the sound was repeated.

Yvonne Waters had bounded out of her bunk and had rushed to a window. It was still very dark, but outlined against the stars she saw a vague shape that swayed and moved. The girl’s hand groped quickly into the drawer of a small stand beside her and drew out a heavy automatic pistol. Then she hurried to the door and across the hallway.

“Dad! Jack!” she called in ahusky whisper. “I’ve seen something big. It’s coming toward the house!”

The young man responded quickly, his unshod feet thudding across the floor. His eyes narrowed when he leaned out of the window. There the thing stood, statuesquely now, not fifty paces away. It was not clearly defined in the darkness, but Jack Cantrill knew at once that it was something completely out of his experience. It seemed to have an upright, cylindrical body that rose perhaps fifteen feet above the ground. Leverlike limbs projected grotesquely from the upper end of this torso, and at the lower end there were shadowy suggestions of other limbs, long and spidery. An angular object surmounted the cylinder, and in its present position it was an outlandish travesty of the head of a man, cocked to one side, listening.

A minute passed. Obeying what must have been an automatic impulse, Yvonne Waters drew on her boots. About the camp she always dressed like the men, and during the last few nights, anticipating sudden developments, they had all slept in their clothing.

Jack Cantrill, crouching by the window, felt the short hairs at the nape of his neck stiffen. Doctor Waters’ hand was on the young man’s shoulder. The fingers were trembling slightly.

It was Jack who first put into words what they were all sure was the truth: “Old Faithful, I think,” he whispered, without any apparent excitement.

He paused for a moment, during which neither of his companions made any comment, for even a slight sound, as far as they knew, might be heard, with disastrous consequences.

The young man was thinking fast. Something had to be done and done quickly, and it was perhaps very easy to do the wrong thing.

“Flashlight!” he whispered presently, taking command of the situation, and the girl, responding quickly to his leadership, slipped her big electric torch into his hand.

“Now out into the open—all of us,” he ordered. “Armed?”

Each carried a pistol. They slipped around to the side of the house, with Cantrill in the lead. The weird giant stood as before, rigid and perfectly still.

Jack raised the flashlight. Working the flash button with his thumb, he proceeded to signal out in the Morse code, a familiar message: “Hello, Man of Mars! Hello, Man of Mars! Hello, Man of Mars!”

And the answer came immediately, flickering from a small spot of green light on the angular “head” of the automaton: “Hello, Man of Earth! Hello, Man of Earth! Comet. Comet. Comet. Comet.” The message was clear enough, but there was an unusual halting, stumbling hesitancy in the way it was given. Old Faithful had always been precise and quick in the messages he had flashed from Mars.