Spaceship crews should be selected on the basis of their non-irritating
qualities as individuals. No chronic complainers, no hypochondriacs, no
bugs on cleanliness--particularly no one-man parties. I speak from
bitter experience.
Because on the first expedition to Mars, Hugh Allenby damned near drove
us nuts with his puns. We finally got so we just ignored them.
But no one can ignore that classic last one--it's written right into the
annals of astronomy, and it's there to stay.
Allenby, in command of the expedition, was first to set foot outside the
ship. As he stepped down from the airlock of the _Mars I_, he placed
that foot on a convenient rock, caught the toe of his weighted boot in a
hole in the rock, wrenched his ankle and smote the ground with his
pants.
Sitting there, eyes pained behind the transparent shield of his
oxygen-mask, he stared at the rock.
* * * * *
It was about five feet high. Ordinary granite--no special shape--and
several inches below its summit, running straight through it in a
northeasterly direction, was a neat round four-inch hole.
"I'm _upset_ by the _hole_ thing," he grunted.
The rest of us scrambled out of the ship and gathered around his plump
form. Only one or two of us winced at his miserable double pun.
"Break anything, Hugh?" asked Burton, our pilot, kneeling beside him.
"Get out of my way, Burton," said Allenby. "You're obstructing my view."
Burton blinked. A man constructed of long bones and caution, he angled
out of the way, looking around to see what he was obstructing view _of_.
He saw the rock and the round hole through it. He stood very still,
staring. So did the rest of us.
"Well, I'll be damned," said Janus, our photographer. "A hole."
"In a rock," added Gonzales, our botanist.
"Round," said Randolph, our biologist.
"An _artifact_," finished Allenby softly.
Burton helped him to his feet. Silently we gathered around the rock.
Janus bent down and put an eye to one end of the hole. I bent down and
looked through the other end. We squinted at each other.
As mineralogist, I was expected to opinionate. "Not drilled," I said
slowly. "Not chipped. Not melted. Certainly not eroded."
I heard a rasping sound by my ear and straightened. Burton was
scratching a thumbnail along the rim of the hole. "Weathered," he said.
"Plenty old. But I'll bet it's a perfect circle, if we measure."
Janus was already fiddling with his camera, testing the cooperation of
the tiny distant sun with a light-meter.
"Let us see _weather_ it is or not," Allenby said.
* * * * *
Burton brought out a steel tape-measure. The hole was four and
three-eighths inches across. It was perfectly circular and about sixteen
inches long. And four feet above the ground.
"But why?" said Randolph. "Why should anyone bore a four-inch tunnel
through a rock way out in the middle of the desert?"
"Religious symbol," said Janus. He looked around, one hand on his gun.
"We'd better keep an eye out--maybe we've landed on sacred ground or
something."
"A totem _hole_, perhaps," Allenby suggested.
"Oh. I don't know," Randolph said--to Janus, not Allenby. As I've
mentioned, we always ignored Allenby's puns. "Note the lack of
ornamentation. Not at all typical of religious articles."
"On Earth," Gonzales reminded him. "Besides, it might be utilitarian,
not symbolic."
"Utilitarian, how?" asked Janus.
"An altar for snakes," Burton said dryly.
"Well," said Allenby, "you can't deny that it has its _holy_ aspects."
"Get your hand away, will you, Peters?" asked Janus.
I did. When Janus's camera had clicked, I bent again and peered through
the hole. "It sights on that low ridge over there," I said. "Maybe it's
some kind of surveying setup. I'm going to take a look."
"Careful," warned Janus. "Remember, it may be sacred."
As I walked away, I heard Allenby say, "Take some scrapings from the
inside of the hole, Gonzales. We might be able to determine if anything
is kept in it...."
One of the stumpy, purplish, barrel-type cacti on the ridge had a long
vertical bite out of it ... as if someone had carefully carved out a
narrow U-shaped section from the top down, finishing the bottom of the U
in a neat semicircle. It was as flat and cleancut as the inside surface
of a horseshoe magnet.