_An odd and curious weird-scientific
story, about the return of a man
who flew to another planet._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales June 1937.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is no doubt in any mind that the Council will uphold my decision
that no communication should be established with Henry Sanborn's kind.
Nevertheless, some of those influenced still by Henry's pleadings,
insist upon further investigation. A simple narration of the events of
the few hours I spent with Henry in his early surroundings will make
clear that my decision should be final.
On the 12th of May, 1935, terrestrial calendar, eighteen years to the
moment after I found Henry dead beneath my laboratory window, he and
I landed in a secluded flat on a mountain slope close to the small
village where Henry was born.
Henry had chosen the place and time of landing for reasons purely
sentimental and to gratify one of those curious grandiose wishes that
our observations, since he came among us, have revealed are common to
his race. Characteristically, as he tramped awkwardly beside me down
a rocky gorge, his mentality was dominated by emotions, and they were
altogether animal. Like all his kind, he resembles in attachment to
locality their domestic beast, the cat. In attachment to individuals
because of contiguity brought about by chance, he is like another brute
of theirs, the dog.
He was elated over our errorless journey, taking to himself all the
credit of it, disregarding the calculations of our engineers whereby
our course was plotted. I did not remind him of his own blundering
landing among us, which wrecked his ship beyond repair. How I restored
life in him and have since maintained it, the recorders have written
down.
As we approached the road, he halted, eyeing me critically.
"Usru," he said, "you'd better use your G-ray. We'll be meeting people
pretty soon."
I tuned the G-ray to my personal aura key and set it at half-charge,
taking a chance that the vision of any we might encounter would be as
dull as Henry's had been before training sharpened it. A half-charge
would protect me from untrained eyes, yet make things comfortable for
Henry's.
"That's better," he commented. "You'd give people such a shock if they
saw you before I explain things that they'd go wild and try to tear you
to pieces."
This should have convinced me that communication with such a race was
impossible. Instead I was moved by a reaction I confess with some
degree of shame.
* * * * *
Enlightened intelligences can feel only contempt for that debasing
emotion, pity, the virtues of which Henry so often tried to impress
upon us. It results in perpetuating types that retard the race. The
thinkers bred and trained it out of us ages ago. Yet now, as I gazed
at Henry, jerking along awkwardly beside me, resembling a moving
slat split half-way up, his non-luminous eyes moist with ecstatic
anticipation, I experienced a pure wish without rational source or
consequences. I wanted to help him because he coveted so passionately
the empty and purely selfish triumph he anticipated. Perhaps
something in that heavy atmosphere aroused resistance in the lower
nerve-levels--a friction generating that deceptive warmth. I felt what
must have been pity! Henry's next words enhanced it.
"Just wait till I tell them!" he exulted. "What they did for that bird
that flew across the Atlantic--what was his name? Oh, Lindbergh! That
won't be a circumstance to what they'll do for me. I tell you
I'll have a king's welcome!"
"Do you think that?" I inquired as we moved along a crudely paved
highway, low, rocky cliffs on either hand. "Or do you only hope for it?"
In Henry, feeling characteristically blazed into resentment, another
useless emotion long ago bred out of us.
"Listen," he said peevishly; "these are my people. I'll be teaching you
from now on, and you've got plenty to learn, I'm telling you."
I was busy extracting from my instrument carrier my memory sounder. I
concentrated upon tuning it to vibrations of eighteen of Henry's years
before.
"That may be true," I replied after a few responses. "I came with you
to be taught. Nevertheless, you are going to need quite a bit of help."
"Not on your life!" Henry's tone grew more boastful. "You're going to
be hollering for help from your Uncle Dudley before we're here much
longer."
"Wait!" I commanded, pitching my voice to the tone level that Henry,
however unwillingly, was always compelled to obey. My strange weakness
dropped from me. I turned away and drew from my instrument carrier
my distance control and focussed the levitator ray upon the ship far
up the now invisible mountain slope. I made sure that the control
functioned and set it at stationary. Finally I turned upon the ship the
G-ray, this time at full strength.
"I am ready to witness your 'king's welcome'," I told Henry.
It is fortunate that the structure of Henry's brain renders it
impossible for him to read a memory sounder, else he might have
foreseen, as I did, his little comedy working itself out to the
denouement that, without my interference, was inevitable. Yet, at the
last, I did interfere a little, but only to hasten the outcome and
shorten our useless stay.
Henry halted and waved his hand. "Look! Ain't that a sight for the
sore eyes now?" He exhaled noisily. "Grand!" he muttered. "God's own
country!"
We stood within a sort of natural gate-way of tumbled rock whereby the
highway passed through the cliffs. Beyond lay the main thoroughfare
of the town, floored with asphalt, lined with pedestrian ramps of
concrete, depots of trade on either side built solidly to this spot and
here abruptly ending.
A dozen of Henry's steps, one glide on my part, took us into the midst
of the industrial section, a place cluttered by wheeled vehicles
traveling on the ground. There were no landing-stages. The race has
made small progress with air travel.
Henry's pale eyes glowed as he led the way toward a gaudy hut half
hidden among glaring signs. There were chairs and tables of uncouth
shape scattered about a graveled space beyond the pedestrian ramp.
Henry pulled out two chairs at one of the tables. Mine faced the door
of the little building; when he was seated, his back was toward it.
"Lemon ice-cream soda," he shouted to a long narrow male who popped out
of the doorway. "And squirt a little phosphate in it.
"He's a waiter," Henry informed me as I eyed the white apron which the
creature wore over a lot of other clothing.
I studied Henry's costume. Our garment-makers had carefully followed
his instructions, but compared with the beings we had passed, his
appearance justified the waiter's astonished stare before he re-entered
the hut to prepare the stuff Henry had ordered.
Henry leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh of content.
"Lord!" he exulted. "How my mouth has watered these eighteen years for
a good old lemon soda! I wish it was safe for you to try one."
* * * * *
The waiter, returning with a sickly-appearing, yellow liquid in a
transparent drinking-vessel, displayed marked agitation at Henry's
ejaculation and at his whispered asides to me. He set down the drink
and scuttled back into the shop, reappearing a moment later with a
rotund male I judged was the proprietor. They looked directly toward
the chair into which I had climbed, but as they evinced no special
agitation, I knew I had nothing to fear from them. I was tempted to
extract from their minds the subject of their whispered conversation,
but a powerful vibration from the aura detector in my carrier informed
me that the first crisis in Henry's little drama was approaching.
It came in a weird chariot propelled by combustion, inside a metal
motor, of a fluid taken from the earth, which is called gasoline. A
female sat in the chariot, grasping tightly a wheel by which she guided
it, her set face reflecting the difficulty and danger of controlling
the crude affair. Henry leaped to his feet, almost overturning the
table.
"I know that woman!" he cried. He was trembling like an excited beast.
"It's ... we used to go together before----" He caught the female's eye
and shouted, "Rachel! Hey! Rachel!"
The female glanced at him at first casually. Then as the shock of
recognition exploded in her primitive mind, unfurnished with any of
the psychological buffers bred into us through ages of selective race
culture, she whitened. The vehicle, forgotten, careened into the
pedestrian ramp. The primitive motor spluttered and ceased.
Henry perceived her recognition and was glad, but gladness turned
to dismay as she reddened and worked frantically at the noisy
starting-mechanism. Then fear darkened his thoughts as the female made
the clumsy machine leap backward, her mind hurling contempt upon him.
The machine snorted, belched from its rear end a cloud of filthy vapor,
and disappeared around the corner of an intersecting street.
Henry sank back into his chair. Already the fear that had clouded
his mind was fading as emotion kindled anew. By a reasoning entirely
sentimental he foresaw success as the possible outcome of his next
encounter with a being of his race--because he hoped for it!