_No!_
If he screamed aloud, nobody knew it. _He_ didn’t know. His head ached,
either from the resounding scream inside the helmet, or else from the
need to scream, kept in his head.
_Doug, get out! Get out, damn it! Get out of here! Damn it, you’re
dead! Don’t you know you’re dead?_
The figure at the tank rose, and began to turn.
Johnny stood helpless, rooted. He would have fled if he could. But the
warm flood embraced him, caressed him, held him bound. Frightening,
enticing, beckoning, threatening, stiflingly suffocating, vibrantly
life-giving. And--
He had run from it before. He could run no more.
The figure turned toward him entirely, and stepped forward.
It was not Doug. Doug was dead.
It was Lee. _Lee, Lisa, Lisa-love, Lisa-loves-John_....
_Her_ walk.... _Her_ love.... _Her_ face, smiling up at him, close and
closer still, through the plastic helmet plate, tearfully?, lovingly,
_hers_.
_Lee!_
He reached out his arms.
She came into them--almost. His gauntletted hands gripped the backs of
her shoulders, and she looked up, laughing. The rigid fabric of his
suit was pressed against hers, and there they stood, each one behind
his own life-saving column of air inside the pressured suits, in a mad
caricature of embrace. Laughter broke loose inside him and bubbled
up. He bent his head; helmets touched; and their laughing mingled and
merged and grew whole. It raced into the current of love-warmth, and
pulled him with it, turning and twisting and sporting in cascading
torrents of lovely-Lisa-laughs-with-love....
How long they stood there in the wondrous half-embrace he did not know:
two enclosed islands inside their Moonsuits, making love through glass
walls by the side of a strange pool of--
He shuddered.
--of bubbling putrescence, of--
_A friend!_ she said sharply.
_Friend!?_ He looked at the tank and he shuddered again. Looked back
at his Lisa. “Hey, babe,” he said gently, his helmet against hers, “I
think we better get you--”
_Not yet!_ She smiled. But she hadn’t waited to hear what he said. And
she hadn’t opened her mouth when she spoke.
Nor had he--the first time.
_You know it’s true, darling_....
Her voice, yes, but voiceless.... Their helmets now were clear inches
apart. _Listen! she insisted._
_Monday afternoon_, she told him, reciting, _you sat in the Messenger
dining room and watched the Moon, and you thought you could see it
get bigger and bigger each time it went around, if you could have
microcalipers to measure with_....
_This morning, you watched every step of the ion blast_....
_Yesterday_....
It went on and on. It battered, without hurt; pushed, without tearing;
forced itself into his consciousness tenderly, gently, inexorably. It
_was_ true. It _worked_.
Like the ion engine--like anything--_it worked_! He saw it work, felt
it work, _knew_ it worked. So it was true.
_Why?_
_How?_
_I’ll show you, darling_.... He let her draw him back to the tank, and
sat down beside her.
_The Shack--8_ P.M.--_In the Guardhouse_
“You are Maria Harounian?” Bourgnese asked sternly.
“Yes.”
“You speak English?”
“Only few words.”
“You are from Red Dome--from the S.U.A.R. Dome?”
She nodded.
He turned to Kutler.
“How long has she been with you in there?”
“She was there when I got there; two hours, maybe? I don’t know if you
noticed, Thad. She’s--quite pregnant. You might ask her to sit.”
“All right. Would you like to sit down, Maria?”
She shook her head. “No-thank.” She smiled. When she smiled, her wide
blonde face looked remarkably like Lisa Trovi’s long dark-skinned face.
“You saw her enter the Shack?”
Some shuffling of feet. “Yes, sir.”
“And you permitted her to enter?”
“Well, yessir. Miss Trovi said--”
“You did not see fit to inform us in Dome?”
“Sir, Miss Trovi said this lady was with _her_. She took all
responsibility.”
“But you knew a search was being conducted for Miss Harounian?”
“Well, yes, but we didn’t know it was _her_. Miss Trovi came to the
door, and said, her and her friend going in to the Shack, let ’em know
if anyone tries to call....”
“You didn’t ask who her ‘friend’ was?” Thad shook his head,
incredulous. These men were _good_ guards. They knew their job.
“Well, no sir.”
“Sir--”
It was the Russian girl. “Yes?”
“Sir--she want us. Calling now.”
There was an odd sort of urgency in her voice, in her face, her whole
stance.
“Right!” The three of them started back to the Shack, with just one
small part of Thad’s mind still wondering why neither he nor the guards
had called Chris yet.
Inside the Shack, Lisa waited, with Johnny beside her. She smiled
a welcome to the Soviet girl; included the two men afterwards. She
beckoned Phil. “Start the tape? I’ll try to keep talking it.”
_Mars--April, 1975--Doug Laughlin_
The Earthman stood beneath a violet sky, on rusty sands, and turned,
inch by inch, slowly, feeling with all his ... something he had no word
for ... exactly as at home he might have felt with a moist finger for
the source of wind.
He made three complete turns before he stopped. He nodded, satisfied.
That was the way. It didn’t change. The tenth time in four days now,
and always the same.
He went into the ship, and entered the direction in the Log.
The brother-Earthman slept. The first one sat at the big book and
wrote. He covered two pages, and went back and read them through,
nodding. Then went back to what he had written before, and read that.
He nodded again.
He closed the book, and sat thinking. Then he stood up and went to the
bunk where the brother-Earthman slept. He reached out a hand and drew
it back again. Reached out and drew back. As if a wall stood between
them. It seemed like a wall: from the brother-Earthman there was a sort
of cloud of _No--Don’t touch!_
He backed off from the bunk, somewhat sadly. Got into his heat suit and
mask. Went down to the cargo hatch. Checked out a sand-cat. Started it
up. Stood out on the sands while the motor warmed in the dawn chill.
Made his inching turns again: nodded, deeply satisfied, _certain_ now.
In his mind, he went back inside to the brother-Earthman, walled in his
bunk with sleep and _No_. Stood there, thinking, and went back inside
and to the Log. Looked through the pages, four of them on which he had
written what at last he believed, what he was going to find out for
sure.
Wanted to leave what he said, but not leave information to follow with.
If he was mad, let one death be enough. Four pages, two sheets, and
each sheet somewhere on it had the destination. He thought:--
If he was right, explanations would follow. If he were wrong--what
difference _why_?
He tore out the sheets. Left the ship. Started out, to find the
Mars-people whose love-thoughts, greetings, warm yearnings and welcomes
came like a wind, like a breeze, like a flood of light, beam of
caresses, from a direction he now knew he knew....
_Mars--April, 1975--Martian_
_I-all waited, eager, sending out callings: joyous, rejoicing,
preparing reception; calling in airmakers, calling in watercells,
calling in; calling for the Earthman coming_....
... _I-all, a planet-wide oneness of readying: for new exchange,
learning, contact, emotion, give-and-take, take-and-give;
from/to/with/alongside/between/together with this unit-body of Earthman
approaching_....
... _I-all, ready now, knowing from last time, from
Earth-other-brothers who came in first great ship, knowing ahead this
time: air, water vapor--without these the Earth-bodies cannot survive;
old memories stirring, from before me-all, once on a time when the
I-we who lived before me-all were discrete bodies alive in a fluid of
water-air; back, distant-far back before the drying and thinning of
atmosphere_....
... _I-all, descended, evolved, changed, mutated, attenuated, substance
of sentience: broken to one-cells; joined in one-thinkingness;
stretched out to use all the sparse vapors spread round a planet;
combined, united, one-minded but many-celled--starch-makers,
water-bags, air-holders, carriers, sun-suckers, thought-senders,
soil-savers, moss-tenders, all of the others, all of the kinds of
me-us, one-cell and one-cell; and here in the dim place of safehold,
the grouped one-cells, planners and thoughtmakers fed, watered, warmed,
by my-our other-I’s, sending out callings for feeders, airers, for
heaters, waterers, all to send extras with carriers to the vault, to
tend the Earth-brother_....
* * * * *
Doug would have been all right, except that he misjudged the distance.
If he had realized he’d have to go all the way to the old city to reach
It-Them, he would have done the whole thing differently. He’d have
told Wendt where he meant to go--if not why--and taken a heli. If he
realized, he would have lived.
If _They-It_ had realized--if the two Russians had come to It-Them
sooner after the crash, had lived a bit longer to tell more and learn
more, if They-It had been able to learn from the first two that for
Earth-bodies the life of the brain alone is not sufficient--If It-They
had understood the whole human mechanism, perhaps he’d have lived.
Whether the Martian (call it that; call it “it”, there is no
proper pronoun) could have summoned resources sufficient to keep
Doug alive--for years, as it would have been--until help came, the
Moon-Martian did not know. But the Martian had too little information
to plan ahead, and it took planning.
It _could_ have stopped him; _would_ have, had it known his supplies
would run out before he reached the vault, or that its own preparations
were foolishly inadequate. But the centuries--aeons? millennia?
How long, Moon-Martian also did not know--of one-ness, alone in
togetherness with all just oneself, the long-long loneliness had only
been outlined, sharp-edged, and identified, when the two Russians came
for so short a time.
Laughlin came closer, and it sent its call stronger and clearer, more
endearing. Laughlin’s cat sputtered and failed, and without thinking,
he strapped the spare oxy tank on his back and set out afoot.
He lived ten days inside the vault beneath what he and Johnny had
decided must have been a Martian bank, but had been built especially to
guard, preserve, tend, grow, the brain-centre of the planet-wide “body”
of the last Martian--the brain into which was poured the memory and
knowledge, skill and affections and hopes and dreams and lost beliefs
and yearnings and ideals of a race which could not in its own first
form survive the stripping of the atmosphere from the old planet.
He lived, intact, ten days; his brain, for which there was enough
starch, air, and water, stayed alive and able to communicate--how
long?--Moon-Martian did not know--a long time, too-long, till he was
sure the Martian knew _enough_ now for the next Earthmen; then he chose
not-to-live.
It was his choice to make. The Martian did not like it, but complied;
it had no choice.
_Wednesday, October 19, 1977, 10:15_ P.M. (_C.S.T._)
The two bulky figures entered the half-track, and the taller one sealed
the door behind them.
When he turned back to her, the woman had already opened the car’s oxy
valve, and removed her helmet.
Without taking his eyes from her face, he reached up and undid the
clasps on his, broke the gasket seal, and lifted the bowl off his head.
He stepped forward, and she took one step at the same time, meeting
him. For the first time in two months, they met each other’s lips.
He stripped off his gauntlets, and held her head in his hands, drinking
in the touch and look and scent and feel of her. From the neck down,
the limp pressure suits swathed them both in formless fabric armor; but
hands and heads were free to caress; a smile could be finger-traced as
well as seen; a murmured word was clear to a close ear.
For minutes, they stood close as the cloth barriers would let them be,
not thinking anything, not saying anything in words that mattered.
Then, still without words, he started the car, and they sat together,
his arm around her, her head on his chest, for all the world like two
wistful teenagers, while the ’track chugged torpidly back over the
black face of the old Moon, under the gleaming greenfaced glow of Earth.
Perhaps half way back, the words began. And then they tumbled out,
questions on both sides coming so eagerly that nothing could really
start to be answered.
It was a curious double-level conversation, too: because while
their spoken words explored the wide new world opened up by the
events at the Shack, the unspoken dialogue between them continued to
re-enforce itself, and re-create their private world of love and close
communication. The contact, once made, seemed quite able to function on
its own, independent of the--
--_whatever-it-was?_ Lisa, in snatches, told Johnny as much as she had
been able to figure out, with Thad’s help and Phil’s, about the growth
and differentiation of the Mars-bugs. The bubbling vat was a sort of
brain-center. It extended nerve-like networks to all other colonies
of bugs. Here on the Moon, where zealous “jailors” fed and tended the
“brain,” the network was just a sort of habit; on Mars, it served the
vital function of connecting the water-holders, the oxygen-makers,
the perceptors and proprioceptors and nutriment-synthesizers. The
adaptation-or-mutation puzzler which had first caught the attention of
the Dome scientists was not too different in nature from the sort of
“instinctive” decision that sets the sex and functions of each new-made
egg in an ant colony. All genes for each caste are present at birth;
the environment of the particular cell determines the final role of the
member. And the choice of environment for that cell? With a functioning
conscious brain, it was much easier to understand in the--Martian?
Moon-Martian? _The friend_, was the way Lee thought of it--than it was
in an ant colony.
She was telling him how Phil had forced her to recognize and experiment
with the _psi_ effects, when the call came. It came on the radio--but
that was one minute after they had reversed direction, and started back
toward the other half-track. It came first in Lee’s awareness.
In the middle of a sentence, she broke off, and at the same instant, in
the wordless sentence of love she was “speaking”, she stopped to say,
_They’re out of gas_.
Later, John realized that if she’d said it aloud, he _still_ would have
doubted. But in the inner dialogue there was no space for doubt or
disbelief. He heard it, knew it, and acted on it, long seconds before
they had switched on and warmed up their radio set, to call for help.
And by that time, he’d had the next thought.
He told Bourgnese, on the radio, that they were on their way, and asked
them to stay tuned in. Then he switched off and started to ask Lee if
she would try something--then knew she already knew, and before he
could tell her exactly what it was he wanted, felt the opening channel
between his own mind and the--_friend_--and switched on the set again.
“Bourgnese?”
“Right here.”
“Listen, this might be just for laughs, but give your buggy a try
again, will you?”
“Tonight I’ll try anything, man,” Thad said, and then, “She won’t
catch, John. We’re bone dry.”
“Forget the starter. Listen--just get in gear and _drive_. I mean--damn
it, this sounds nuts. _Pretend_ you’ve got gas. Like, try it once,
okay?”
“What can I lose?”
A moment’s wait, and an exclamation--hardly more than a _whoosh_
of air, but it contained all the bafflement, delight, suspicion,
excitement, and fascination that gave them the answer. Then, very
calmly: “Nice going, John. We’ll make it back, I guess.”
The new world of collaboration had started.