Stowaway to Mars (9 page)

'Heavens no! All I am suggesting is that if there is life it will probably be not incomprehensibly different in form from that we know. Fundamentally it will depend on the molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon which go to make up protoplasm. What shapes it may have taken, we can only wait and see.'

'What a unique opportunity for reviving the traveller's tale as an institution,' put in Froud. 'We could have a lot of fun telling yarns about dragons, unicorns, Cyclops, centaurs, hippogriffs and all the rest of them when we get home.'

'You've forgotten that you're the camera man of this expedition. They'd demand photographs,' Dale reminded him. Froud grinned.

'The camera never lies but, oh, what a lot you can do with a photograph before you print it. It'll be amusing,' he went on, 'to see which of the story tellers was nearest the truth. Wells, with his jelly like creatures, Weinbaum, with his queer birds, Burroughs, with his menageries of curiosities, or Stapledon, with his intelligent clouds? And which of the theorists, too. Lowell, who started the canal irrigation notion, Luyten, who said that the conditions are just, but only just, sufficient for life to exist at all, Shirning, who?'

He stopped suddenly. The rest, looking at him in' surprise, saw that he had turned his head and was looking at the girl. And she was returning his stare steadily. Her expression told them nothing. Her lips were slightly parted. She seemed to breathe a little faster than usual. Neither of them spoke. Dugan said:

'Well, what did what's his name say, anyway?'

But the rest took no notice. The doctor was frowning slightly, as if in an effort of memory. Dale looked frankly bewildered, the more so for he noticed that even Burns' attention had been caught. Froud, with his eyes still on the girl's face, raised his eyebrows interrogatively. She hesitated for a second and then gave an all but imperceptible nod.

'Yes,' she said slowly, 'I suppose they'll have to know now.' Froud twisted round to face the others.

'Gentlemen, the mystery of the Gloria Mundi is solved. I present, for the first time on any space ship, Miss Joan Shirning.'

The effect of the announcement was varied.

'So that was it,' the doctor murmured half aloud, as he looked at the girl again. Burns nodded, and eyed her in the manner of one reserving judgment. Dugan goggled, and Dale merely increased his expression of bewilderment.

'What's it all about?' he asked irritably.

'Good Lord, man. Surely you can't have forgotten the Shirning business already?'

'I seem to have heard the name somewhere, but what and when was it?'

'About five years ago. Grand newspaper stunt. Started off great and then flopped dead. You couldn't help'

'I must have been away, besides, I spent the last part of 1976 in a Chinese hospital over that Gobi Desert crash. What was the Shirning business?' Froud looked at the girl again.

'Miss Shirning will be able to tell you about it better than I can, it's her story.'

'No.' Joan shook her head. 'I'd rather you told what you know of it first.'

After a moment's hesitation Froud agreed.

'All right. And then you can fill in the details. As far as I can remember, it went like this. John Shirning, F.R.S., D.Sc., etc., was professor of Physics at Worcester University. It's not a large place, and they were lucky to have him, because he was a biggish shot in the physics world. However, he'd been there several years, and it seemed to suit him all right. Well, sometime in the autumn of 1976 he mentioned to a friend, in confidence, that he had come by a remarkable machine which he could not understand either in principle or operation. As far as he knew, it was unique, and in the course of the conversation, he let slip the suggestion that it might even be of extra-terrestrial origin.

'Well, the friend was less of a friend than Shirning thought. Either he really thought that Shirning was going dotty, or else he wanted to create the impression that he was. Anyway, he started spreading the yarn left and right. Now, mind you, if it had been about any Tom, Dick or Harry, nobody would have taken any notice, but because the tale was hitched on to Shirning, people began to get curious. They started hinting about it and soon got to asking him outright what this mysterious thing was, and he made the primary mistake of not denying the whole thing and stamping on it then and there. Instead, he told them to mind their own damned business, which, of course, they did not. Then, after a bit, the Press got hold of it, and started being funny at his expense.

'The University faculty stood it for a week or so, and then they tackled him. Told him he was making the place a laughing stock, and would he please give a public denial of the story right away. Then he shook them a bit by saying he couldn't do that because, in his opinion, it was the truth. Of course they opened their eyes, pulled long faces, shook their heads and didn't believe him and you can hardly blame them. So, to cut it short, he said that the thing, whatever it was, had been in his house for nearly a month now and he was more convinced than ever that no one on Earth had the knowledge necessary to make it. And if they didn't believe him, he'd show it to them the next day what was more, he'd show it to the Press, too, and he defied any of them to explain what the thing was, or on what principles it worked.

'The following day he allowed about twenty five of us to come to the show I was covering it for the Poster and we were all crowded into one room of his house while he gave a great harangue about his machine. We listened, some of us bored, and some of us quite impressed, while the University authorities looked just plain worried. Then he said we should see for ourselves. He had just opened the door to lead us to his lab. when his daughter by the way, I apologize to Miss Shirning for being so long in recognizing her when she came running in to say that the thing had gone.'

'You mean stolen?' Dale asked.

'No, that would have been fishy enough at the critical moment, but this was worse. She said it had dissolved itself with chemicals in the lab. Shirning sprinted along with the rest of us behind him. All we saw was a large pool of metal all over the floor, and he went nearly frantic...

'Well! I mean to say! Can't you imagine the results? It was a gift to the cheap rags. They made whoopee with it, and tore Shirning to bits for a public holiday. He had to resign his post right off. It was the end of him as far as his career was concerned.

'But, if it was a stunt, the most puzzling thing about it was, why should he do it? And, even more pertinently where a man of his talent was concerned, why should he do it so badly? A man of his standing had no need of even mild stunts for self advertisement, let alone an impossible thing like this. The most charitable talked darkly of overwork, but he didn't look overworked to me. After that, he and Miss Shirning disappeared, and it all petered out as these things do.

'That's a straight view of the public side of the affair, isn't it, Miss Shirning?'

'That's what happened, Mr. Froud. And considering what most of the other journalists there wrote in their papers afterwards, I think you are being very fair.'

'Don't be too hard on them. They had to earn their bread.'

'They earned it by breaking my father.'

'Sounds like nonsense to me,' Dale put in. 'Do you mean to tell me that Shirning actually claimed that this machine was not made on Earth, at all? That it got there from another planet?'

'To be accurate,' the girl told him, 'it came from Mars.'

'Oh,' said Dale, and a prolonged silence fell over the living room of the Gloria Mundi.

'You still stick to it, then, both of you?' Froud said, at last.

'We do.'

'And so I suppose we have found out at last why you are here?'

'Yes.'

'I don't see that that gives you any good reason for stowing away on my ship,' Dale said. 'Even if you do stand by such a fantastic yarn, we should find out what there is on Mars whether you're with us or not.'

'I told you before that I came to help,' said the girl calmly. 'I wrote to you, but you didn't answer my letter, so I came.'

'You wrote! My God! The moment the news of this flight got out half the world started writing to me. I had to have a batch of secretaries to sort the mail. They put the stuff into piles: would be passengers, mystic warnings, crazy inventors, plain nuts, beggars, miscellaneous. Which was yours? The odds are in the favour of "plain nuts"; it was the biggest class.'

'I offered my services.'

'Of course. So did a million or so others. How?'

'As an interpreter.'

Another withering silence fell on the room. Froud was unable to restrain a chuckle as he caught sight of Dale's face.

'Look here, young woman,' said the latter, when he had recovered his power of speech, 'are you trying to have a game with me? If so, I don't think it's very funny.'

'I'm perfectly serious.'

'Evidently it was the "plain nuts" list. However, I can play, too. May I ask what University is now giving degrees in conversational Martian?'

Joan continued to face him unabashed. She said, slowly:

'Nor is that very funny, Mr. Curtance. I can't speak it, but I can write it. I fancy that I am the only person on Earth who can though I may be wrong in that.'

'No,' said Dale, 'don't qualify. I'm thoroughly prepared to believe that you're unique.'

She studied him for a moment.

'In this matter, I am. And,' she added, 'I have also had a unique opportunity of studying the particular type of facetiousness to which the subject gives rise. I suggest that as you have now allowed your reflexes to relieve themselves in the conventional style, you might, just for the time being, control your brain after the manner of an intelligent person.'

'Atta girl!' murmured Froud appreciatively, during the subsequent pause.

Dale reddened. He opened his mouth to speak, and then thought better of it. Instead, he relapsed into a condition akin to sulks.

'Miss Shirning,' said Froud, 'as you know, I was at that meeting at your father's house. I didn't think it funny, as the others mostly did. I knew your father's reputation too well to put it down as a hoax. Besides, nobody watching him closely could have had any doubt that he believed every word he was saying. But after the anticlimax, of course, he could do nothing, and neither of you would tell us a word more of the story. What was it?'

'What good would it have been? We'd lost the only true proof the machine itself. Anything we could have said would have been more fuel for the humorists.' She looked at Dale as she spoke.

'Machine!' said the doctor, emerging explosively from his silence. 'You keep on talking about a machine. Good heavens, girl, there are thousands of different kinds of machines, from sewing machines to mechanical navvies. What was this language teaching machine of yours a kind of tele-typewriter?'

'No. Nothing like that. Nothing like anything we know. I can show you, if you're really interested.'

'Of course I'm interested. If it's true, I'm interested in what you found. If it's not true, I'm interested in your mental condition. The one thing I'm sure about was that it wasn't an intentional hoax, or you wouldn't be here. Is that fair enough?'

'All right,' she agreed. She fumbled in a pocket and produced half a dozen pieces of paper. 'After it destroyed itself, our only record was a movie we had made of it. These are enlargements from that film.'

The doctor took the photographs. Frond came behind him and looked over his shoulder. In the background he recognized a view of Shirning's house at Worcester, but the object on the lawn in the foreground caused him to give an exclamation of surprise. It appeared to consist of a metallic casing, roughly coffin shaped and supported horizontally upon four pairs of jointed metal legs. Four of the pictures were taken from various angles to give a good idea of the whole, and one of them, which included Joan Shirning standing beside it, enabled him to estimate the length of the casing at a few inches under six feet. Another was a close up of one end, showing a complicated arrangement of lenses and other instruments grouped upon the front panel, and the last gave detail of a section of the side, showing the attachment to the casing of two lengths of something looking not unlike armoured hose save that each piece tapered to its free end. Looking again at the full length photographs Frond saw that, in some, all four of these side members were closely coiled against the body of the machine, while, in others, they were outstretched, apparently in the act of waving about.

'Dear me,' he said thoughtfully. 'So that was the great Whatsit as it appeared in life.'

The doctor grunted. 'But what did it do? What was it for? People don't just make machines because they like them, they make them to do something.'

'That,' said Joan, 'is exactly what we thought. It could do quite a lot of things. But my father thought still thinks, in fact that its primary purpose was communication.'

Dale silently held out his hand, and the doctor passed the photographs across, saying to the girl:

'Won't you tell us the whole thing from the beginning and let's see what we can make of it?'

'I second that,' Frond added.

The girl glanced at the other three. They said nothing. Dale was looking in a puzzled fashion at the photographs. Dugan avoided her eye. Burns maintained his stolid, non-committal front.

Joan made up her mind. 'I will, but on condition that you don't interrupt, and that you keep your questions till the end.'

The two men nodded.

ON the twenty third of September, that year (she began), my father had gone over to Malvern on some business which I forget now. It was just after dusk when he started to motor home to Worcester. The distance, as you probably know, is not far, no more than ten miles, and less than that to our house, for we lived on the Malvern side of Worcester. He had covered about one third of the distance and was slowing down for a corner which is awkward because it coincides with a farm crossing, when he heard a loud shout of alarm. A man ran out of the farmyard on the right at top speed. My father just managed to miss him by violent braking as he crossed the road. At the same time there was a great clattering of hooves and two heavy cart horses, snorting with terror, thundered out of the. gateway. They swerved at the sight of the car and one missed it entirely, but the other lurched against it, buckling up one wing like cardboard and smashing the side lamp. It staggered a bit, then it recovered itself and galloped off.