Why do the Martians drink red wine, swagger
about, spout vile poetry and fight endless duels
with each other? How did Terence Michael Burke
change their minds about invading the Earth?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
All this time we've kept quiet as a whole cageful of mice. And with
good reason. During the Big Scare, while everyone was afraid that
the Exclusion Ultimatum meant the Martians wanted an interplanetary
war, the Earth Governments would have been only too ready to hang,
shoot, stab, gas, electrocute, freeze, burn, poison, impale and/or
defenestrate the dastardly culprits responsible. If they could have
discovered who did what to whom. They didn't savvy Marties then--and
still don't.
But we are lucky. The Marties never explained why they called home
their Cultural Emissaries, abandoned space travel, cut off Luminophone
contact and excluded Earthmen and Earth ships from Mars. They couldn't,
because they themselves weren't sure what had happened. And amid the
confusion on Earth the last Mars transit of the spaceship _Banshee_
escaped official attention, which was largely due to Polly's good
sense in making Mike see he'd better keep his big mouth shut. Our story
would only have caused us trouble, even after the Scare died down.
All that was five years ago, but we still thought it best to keep
still when this rather surprising diplomatic angling for resumption
of Martio-Terran relations began just recently. The five of us were
closer to what caused the Malignant Inertia Complex than all the
big-name psychologists who have written books of wrong guesses since it
disappeared, and we could see no danger of it starting up again. Mike
was sure the Martian Thing had lost its grip. So we were willing to
let the new treaty come up for a popular vote, as all interplanetary
treaties must under the Earth Governments charter, without sticking our
oars in or our necks out.
But last night Wild Bill Harrigan and I bumped into Miu Tlenow, a
North Venus cat-man and veteran space-hopper who had just brought the
Venusian diplomatic intermediaries from Mars to Earth for more treaty
talks.
Naturally Bill and I were curious about what cooked on Mars. Tlenow
talked, openly puzzled, while Bill and I looked at each other and
remembered.
I'm not mad at anyone. Not even at the Thing. Mike swears the Thing
meant no harm and the Cultural Emissaries couldn't help themselves,
and I believe him. In fact I feel rather sorry for the poor Marties
themselves. It must be tough on them to have to live with themselves
and each other.
The psychos would probably name the Marties' current condition Acute
Virulent Mass Burke-itis and laugh it off. But the psychos don't know
Mike as Bill and I do. So Bill insists it's our duty as Earth citizens
to divulge everything, and I'm inclined to agree. The thought of a
whole planetful of Marties obsessed with Mike's sense of humor is
appalling.
Telling this really should be Mike's job--he's the only human who
ever made contact with the Martian Thing--but he and Polly live at
Venus Central now and the Professor is out there now visiting his
grandchildren, Mike, Jr. and Bridget Dorrene. So I'm stuck. But I still
think Bill ran in his own dice when we rolled to see which of us had to
write this.
* * * * *
The Malignant Inertia Complex started while we were in space and
was already pretty widespread when Bill and Mike and I brought the
_Banshee_ in from a Venus haul, and during the three weeks we spent
getting ready for the Mars transit and installing the Professor's
latest special equipment I had the creeping geevils constantly. There
was a sour, stagnant undercurrent to life in Spaceport City. For once
the rowdy place was actually quiet, dead in fact, and although there
were a dozen ships in, the Ursa Major Tavern was almost deserted.
Day and night the telaudio jabbered about the Complex, mostly learned
doctors issuing statements that it was a purely psychological
phenomenon, a sort of hysteria induced by this, that and the other
factor in a civilization altering too rapidly for human minds to adjust.
Most of them followed the line that the disease would cure itself soon,
but behind their seven-jet words they seemed a bit uneasy themselves.
And I'll never forget the particularly learned gent who suffered an
attack right in the middle of his broadcast speech. He was talking
reassuringly when all of a sudden his voice petered out. His eyes got
all glazed and his face took on an empty look, and he sat there staring
at the mike until the control room cut him off. It gave me the shivers.
It was like that all over Earth. Each day more and more people got
longer spells where they'd do absolutely nothing. It was raising the
very devil with organized civilization and nobody could do anything
about it. And the worst of it was that the victims didn't seem to mind.
Everything was slowing down, and it made it plenty tough to do business
with the outfits that furnished our supplies. People kept acting more
and more like zombies--or Martians. But nobody thought of connecting
the Complex with the Cultural Emissaries.
The whole thing hit me right in my pet phobia.
* * * * *
Then it was blast-off morning, with me trying to keep my mind off
my phobia and those nagging fears that had nothing to do with
space-hopping. I cornered the Professor in the _Banshee's_ control room.
"The power drain of this widget of yours has me worried," I complained.
"The secondaries are already running overloaded."
As pilot-engineer, power was my responsibility.
Professor Tim Harrigan looked around, but not in his usual quick,
birdlike way, and his eyes were dull.
"I'm sorry, Olsen." His voice sounded as though something were missing.
"I haven't been able to reduce input requirements yet. The circuit
changes keep eluding me."
Worms started squirming inside me. If the Professor, with his brilliant
brain, were getting the Complex--
"Polly will tell Mike to be careful of power," he tried to reassure me.
Naturally Polly was scheduled to handle the ground end. She usually did
whenever we were testing one of the Professor's inventions. In some
ways she was more like a partner than a daughter to him. The set in the
Professor's laboratory was rigged for her, while the Hustic aboard ship
was adjusted to Mike's brain-wave pattern.
That's right. The thing we were going to test en route to Mars was the
Harrigan Unimodulate Subetheric Telepathic Interspatial Communicator.
Yes, I know that officially the Hustic wasn't invented until nearly a
year later. Keeping it under wraps after what it did was one of our
security measures. We were afraid someone might add two and two and get
us hanged, shot, stabbed, defenestrated, etc.
That first set was a bulky, power-hogging, spit-and-solder job
very different from the perfected, foolproof, universal-type
transceivers that have now replaced the clumsy old Luminophones on all
interplanetary routes.
Terence Michael Burke, our red-headed astrogator, was standing as close
to Polly as he could get, and from the gleam in his eye he was quoting
some more of his abominable romantic poetry at her. But she wasn't
responding as usual. Not even blushing. She just stood there looking
pale and wan, frozen up inside. Typical symptoms of the Complex, and it
made me wince.
Mike looked around, missed something, and turned to me.
"Where'd you put my books?" he demanded.
"Cargo hold," I growled at him. "Had to use that space for the Hustic
modulator."
"Barbarian squarehead!" he yelped.
"If you'd gas off to sleep like a human being--!" I squawked right back
at him. The Wilsons weren't warming yet, but already my nerves were
tightening up in anticipation.
"Come on, Polly," he said. But she didn't follow him until he took her
hand.
Mike was born in San Francisco, but he's a professional Irishman. Red
Irish. And a prolifically lousy poet. Had a picture of himself as
the spiritual descendent of Fin McCool and Francois Villon and Robin
Hood and Sir Henry Morgan and all the other poet-adventurers and
troublemakers of history. He was one of those romantics--and still is.
When he and Polly came back a few minutes later he had his bag of books
under one arm, a smear of lipstick across his mouth, and a worried
expression on his face. That was unusual. Ordinarily Mike was too
slugnutty to worry about anything. On Polly's much prettier countenance
there was no expression at all. And that was all wrong.
Wild Bill, Professor Harrigan's younger but larger brother and skipper
of the _Banshee_, came up from checking the drive room.
"Final tests," he said.
So we built up the secondaries until the whole ship howled and shrieked
with their noise. Then when the needles came over without indicating
radiation leakage we cut them to idling again.
Polly had snapped out of her daze and was clinging to Mike.
"I'm scared," she shouted in his ear, not realizing the noise had died.
"Think nice thoughts to me on the Hustic, Michael dearest."
Mike's arms tightened around her. "Of course, my one and only love,
pearl of my universe and lodestar of my life. Every day."
I didn't like that "every day" stuff. I never approved of running
secondary power-packs to the limit. But before I could say anything
Bill glanced at the chronometer.
"Clear out and dog down," he ordered.
Mike grabbed Polly and kissed her thoroughly, but she had gone back
into her trance and he might as well have been kissing a rag doll. That
was all wrong, too. She usually wasn't that way at all, not with Mike.
Finally the Professor shook his head as though clearing away a mental
fog, grabbed his daughter and led her out through the airlock.
Outside, at the edge of the spaceport, one of the Martian Cultural
Emissaries was watching. Just watching. He wasn't excited or even
particularly interested by the _Banshee_ about to blast off for his
home planet, as far as Bill and I could see as we tugged on the heavy
circular door. Just standing there as though about to take root. That's
all the three hundred Cultural Emissaries who had come in from Mars a
few months before ever did. Stood around.
That's all the Marties did on Mars, too. The first Earthmen to ground
on the Red Planet thought the Marties were incredibly dull and stupid
because of their slow reactions. They began to change their minds after
a few months contact, when the Marties copied our spaceships, adapting
them to their own peculiar physical requirements, and displayed a
disconcerting savvy in trading. But still their thoughts were alien,
and we didn't understand them.
When the red hand touched fifteen Bill Harrigan was already in his
cushions with a sleep mask over his craggy face. I envied him, but
it was my turn to ride the chair out. Mike was in the other set of
pneumatic cushions, but he hadn't gassed out. He grinned at me.
Then the red hand came straight up. I gritted my teeth and tripped the
master throttle of the multiplex. The seven big Wilsons hit with a
soundless shock and the _Banshee_ went out.
* * * * *
The first few shifts were routine. Nasty, of course. The only pleasant
part of spaceflight before the Halstead-Jenkins Mass Diminutors
replaced Wilson drivers two years ago were the off-shifts when you
could crawl into the cushions and turn on the sleep gas. Every sane and
normal spacehand gassed out as much of the time as possible. It was
safest.
For the Wilsons radiated supersonics with a frequency somewhere in
the neighborhood of a fingernail scratching down a blackboard. Only
amplified a million, billion, jillion stinking times.
That's why space wasn't crowded in those days, and why some of the
earlier ships didn't come back. Wilsons did something to a man's nerves
and emotions. A crew might be good friends on the ground, but that
constant barrage of driver supersonics made them hate each other as
long as they were in transit. Occasionally some poor guy would crack
wide open, go space-batty, and when that happened the victim almost
always wanted to kill his crewmates and wreck the controls. Earplugs
were useless, for you don't hear supersonics. They sneak in through
your pores and get under your toenails and even come down through the
hairs of your head. They get in everywhere.
Whenever the auto-timer cut the gas on me and I had to go on watch I
always felt as though all the fiends of hell were digging at my nerves
with red-hot power tools. I itched inside and couldn't get at the
itches to scratch. But I was used to that.
* * * * *
Then, on one of my watches, the meters showed a heavy drain on the
secondaries. I wrote a note asking Mike to limit his test calls with
the Hustic, and then rewrote it six different times to keep it from
sounding too nasty. That's how you get with Wilsons running.
On my next time up I found a sketch of myself wet-nursing the power
packs fastened to the bulkhead, and an alleged poem that was mostly
putrid puns. Mike's idea of humor.
Out of curiosity I put on the electrode-studded Hustic helmet and
turned the set to receive.
Wham! Stars wheeled and comets fizzed and vague dark shapes glided and
circled and balls of fire grew and exploded in showers of multicolored
sparks.