Craig grabbed Miller's hand and shook it.
Miller gave Etl a chance to say no. "You can stay on Earth if you want
to, Etl."
But the creature said: "I have lived all my life with the idea of
going, Miller. Thank you."
* * * * *
Miller briefed us about his plan. Then he, Klein, Craig and I all took
a lot of psych tests--trick questioning and so forth to reveal defects
of conviction and control. But we were all pretty well indoctrinated
and steady. Etl had taken so many tests already that, if there were
any flaws still hidden in him, they would probably never be found.
Mars and Earth were approaching closer to each other again in their
orbital positions. A month before takeoff time, Craig, Klein and I
took Etl, in a small air-conditioned cage, to White Sands. The ship
towered there, silvery, already completed. We knew its structure and
the function of its machinery intimately from study of its blueprints.
But our acquaintance with it had to be actual, too. So we went over it
again and again, under Miller's tutelage.
Miller wrote a last message, to be handed to the newscast boys after
our departure:
"_If by Martian action, we fail to return, don't blame the Martians
too quickly, because there is a difference and a doubt. Contact
between worlds is worth more than the poison of a grudge...._"
I said good-by to Alice and the kids, who had come out to see me off.
I felt pretty punk. Maybe I was a stinker, going off like that. But,
on the other hand, that wasn't entirely the right way to look at
things, because Patty's and Ron's faces fairly glowed with pride for
their pa. The tough part, then, was for Alice, who knew what it was
all about. Yet she looked proud, too. And she didn't go damp.
"If it weren't for the kids, I'd be trying to go along, Louie," she
told me. "Take care of yourself."
She knew that a guy has to do what's in his heart. I think that the
basic and initial motive of exploration is that richest of human
commodities--high romance. The metallic ores and other commercial
stuff that get involved later are only cheap by-products. To make the
dream of space travel a reality was one of our purposes. But to try to
forestall the danger behind it was at least as important.
* * * * *
We blasted off in a rush of fire that must have knocked down some
self-operating television cameras. We endured the strangling thrust of
acceleration, and then the weightlessness of just coasting on our
built-up velocity. We saw the stars and the black sky of space. We saw
the Earth dwindle away behind us.
But the journey itself, though it lasted ninety days, was no real
adventure--comparatively speaking. There was nothing unpredictable in
it. Space conditions were known. We even knew about the tension of
nostalgia. But we understood, too, the mental attitudes that could
lessen the strain. Crossing space to another world under the
tremendous power of atomic fusion, and under the precise guidance of
mathematics and piloting devices, reduces the process almost to a
formula. If things go right, you get where you're going; if not, there
isn't much you can do. Anyway, we had the feeling that the technical
side of interplanetary travel was the simplest part.
There is a marking near the Martian equator shaped like the funnel of
a gigantic tornado. It is the red planet's most conspicuous feature
and it includes probably the least arid territory of a cold, arid
world. Syrtis Major, it is called. Astronomers had always supposed it
to be an ancient sea-bottom. That was where our piloting devices were
set to take us.
Over it, our retarding fore-jets blazed for the last time. Our
retractable wings slid from their sockets and took hold of the thin
atmosphere with a thump and a soft rustle. On great rubber-tired
wheels, our ship--horizontal now, like a plane--landed in a broad
valley that must have been cleared of boulders by Martian engineers
countless ages before.
Our craft stopped rumbling. We peered from the windows of our cabin,
saw the deep blue of the sky and the smaller but brilliant Sun. We saw
little dusty whirlwinds, carven monoliths that were weathering away,
strange blue-green vegetation, some of which we could recognize. To
the east, a metal tower glinted. And a mile beyond it there was a
tremendous flat structure. An expanse of glassy roof shone. What might
have been a highway curved like a white ribbon into the distance.
The scene was quiet, beautiful and sad. You could feel that here maybe
a hundred civilizations had risen, and had sunk back into the dust.
Mars was no older than the Earth; but it was smaller, had cooled
faster and must have borne life sooner. Perhaps some of those earlier
cultures had achieved space travel. But, if so, it had been forgotten
until recent years. Very soon now its result would be tested. The
meeting of alien entity with alien entity was at hand.
I looked at Etl, still in his air-conditioned cage. His stalked eyes
had a glow and they swayed nervously. Here was the home-planet that he
had never seen. Was he eager or frightened, or both?
His education and experience were Earthly. He knew no more of Mars
than we did. Yet, now that he was here and probably at home, did
difference of physical structure and emotion make him feel that the
rest of us were enemies, forever too different for friendly contact?
My hide began to pucker.
* * * * *
High in the sky, some kind of aircraft glistened. On the distant
turnpike there were the shining specks of vehicles that vanished from
sight behind a ridge shaggy with vegetation.
Miller had a tight, nervous smile. "Remember, men," he said.
"Passivity. Three men can't afford to get into a fight with a whole
planet."
We put on spacesuits, which we'd need if someone damaged our rocket.
It had been known for years that Martian air was too thin and far too
poor in oxygen for human lungs. Even Etl, in his cage, had an oxygen
mask that Klein had made for him. We had provided him with this
because the Martian atmosphere, drifting away through the ages, might
be even leaner than the mixture we'd given Etl on Earth. That had been
based on spectroscopic analyses at 40 to 60 million miles' distance,
which isn't close enough for any certainty.
Now all we could do was wait and see what would happen. I know that
some jerks, trying to make contact with the inhabitants of an unknown
world, would just barge in and take over. Maybe they'd wave a few
times and grin. If instead of being met like brothers, they were shot
at, they'd be inclined to start shooting. If they got out alive, their
hatred would be everlasting. We had more sense.
Yet _passivity_ was a word that I didn't entirely like. It sounded
spineless. The art of balancing naive trust exactly against hard
cynicism, to try to produce something that makes a little sense, isn't
always easy. Though we knew something of Martians, we didn't know
nearly enough. Our plan might be wrong; we might turn out to be dead
idiots in a short time. Still, it was the best thing that we could
think of.
The afternoon wore on. With the dropping temperature, a cold pearly
haze began to form around the horizon. The landscape around us was too
quiet. And there was plenty of vegetation at hand to provide cover.
Maybe it had been a mistake to land here. But we couldn't see that an
arid place would be any good either. We had needed to come to a region
that was probably inhabited.
We saw a Martian only once--scampering across an open glade, holding
himself high on his stiffened tentacles. Here, where the gravity was
only thirty-eight percent of the terrestrial, that was possible. It
lessened the eeriness a lot to know beforehand what a Martian looked
like. He looked like Etl.
* * * * *
Later, something pinged savagely against the flank of our rocket. So
there were trigger-happy individuals here, too. But I remembered how,
on Earth, Etl's cage had been surrounded by machine-guns and cyanogen
tanks, rigged to kill him quickly if it became necessary. That hadn't
been malice, only sensible precaution against the unpredictable. And
wasn't our being surrounded by weapons here only the same thing, from
another viewpoint? Yet it didn't feel pleasant, sensible or not.
There were no more shots for half an hour. But our tension mounted
with the waiting.
Finally Klein said through his helmet phone: "Maybe Etl ought to go
out and scout around now."
Etl was naturally the only one of us who had much chance for success.
"Go only if you really want to, Etl," Miller said. "It could be
dangerous even for you."
But Etl had already put on his oxygen mask. Air hissed into his cage
from the greater pressure outside as he turned a valve. Then he
unlatched the cage-door. He wouldn't be harmed by the brief exposure
to atmosphere of Earth-density while he moved to our rocket's airlock.
Now he was getting around high on his tendrils. Like a true Martian.
He left his specially built pistol behind, according to plan. We had
weapons, but we didn't mean to use them unless everything went dead
wrong.
Etl's tendrils touched the dusty surface of Mars. A minute later, he
disappeared behind some scrub growths. Then, for ten minutes, the
pendant silence was heavy. It was broken by the sound of a shot,
coming back to us thinly through the rarefied air.
"Maybe they got him," Craig said anxiously.
Nobody answered. I thought of an old story I'd read about a boy being
brought up by wolves. His ways were so like an animal's that hunters
had shot him. He had come back to civilization dead. Perhaps there was
no other way.
By sundown, Etl had not returned. So three things seemed possible: He
had been murdered. He had been captured. Or else he had deserted to
his own kind. I began to wonder. What if we were complete fools? What
if there were more than differences of body and background, plus the
dread of newness, between Earthmen and Martians, preventing their
friendship?
What if Martians were basically malevolent?
But speculation was useless now. We were committed to a line of
action. We had to follow it through.
We ate a meager supper. The brief dusk changed to a night blazing with
frigid stars. But the darkness on the ground remained until the jagged
lump of light that was Phobos, the nearer moon, arose out of the west.
Then we saw two shapes rushing toward our ship to find cover closer to
it. As they hid themselves behind a clump of cactiform shrubs, I had
only the memory of how I had seen them for a moment, their odd masks
and accoutrements glinting, their supporting tendrils looking like
tattered rags come alive in the dim moonlight.
* * * * *
We'd turned the light out in our cabin, so we couldn't be seen through
the windows. But now we heard soft, scraping sounds against the outer
skin of our rocket. Probably they meant that the Martians were trying
to get in. I began to sweat all over, because I knew what Miller meant
to do. Here was a situation that we had visualized beforehand.
"We could shut them out till dawn, Miller," I whispered hoarsely.
"We'd all feel better if the meeting took place in day-light. And
there'd be less chance of things going wrong."
But Miller said, "We can't tell what they'd be doing in the dark
meanwhile, Nolan. Maybe fixing to blow us up. So we'd better get this
thing over with now."
I knew he was right. Active resistance to the Martians could never
save us, if they intended to destroy us. We might have taken the
rocket off the ground like a plane, seeking safety in the upper air
for a while, if we could get it launched that way from the rough
terrain. But using our jets might kill some of the Martians just
outside. They could interpret it as a hostile act.
We didn't matter much, except to ourselves. And our primary objective
was to make friendly contact with the beings of this planet, without
friction, if it could be done. If we failed, space travel might become
a genuine menace to Earth.
At Miller's order, Craig turned on our cabin lights. Miller pressed
the controls of our ship's airlock. While its outer valve remained
wide, the inner valve unsealed itself and swung slowly toward us. Our
air whooshed out.
The opening of that inner valve meant we were letting horror in. We
kept out of line of possible fire through the open door.
Our idea was to control our instinctive reactions to strangeness, to
remain passive, giving the Martians a chance to get over their own
probable terror of us by finding out that we meant no harm. Otherwise
we might be murdering each other.
The long wait was agony. In spite of the dehumidifying unit of my
spacesuit, I could feel the sweat from my body collecting in puddles
in the bottoms of my boots. A dozen times there were soft rustles and
scrapes at the airlock; then sounds of hurried retreat.
But at last a mass of gray-pink tendrils intruded over the threshold.
And we saw the stalked eyes, faintly luminous in the shadowy interior
of the lock. Grotesquely up-ended on its tentacles, the monster seemed
to flow into the cabin. Over its mouth-palps was the cup of what must
have been its oxygen mask.
What was clearly the muzzle of some kind of pistol, smoothly machined,
was held ready by a mass of tendrils that suggested Gorgon hair.
Behind the first monster was a second, similarly armed. Behind him was
a third. After that I lost count, as the horde, impelled by fear to
grab control in one savage rush, spilled into the cabin with a
dry-leaf rustle.
* * * * *
All my instincts urged me to yank my automatic out of my belt and let
go at that flood of horror. Yes, that was in me, although I'd been in
intimate association with Etl for four years. Psychologists say that
no will power could keep a man's reflexes from withdrawing his hand
from a hot stove for very long. And going for my gun seemed almost a
reflex action.
There was plenty of sound logic to back up the urge to shoot. In the
presence of the unfathomable, how could you replace the tried defenses
of instinct with intellectual ideas of good will?
[Illustration]
On the other hand, to shoot now would be suicide and ruin our hopes,
besides. So maybe there'd have to be human sacrifices to faith between
the planets. If we succeeded in following the plan, our faith would
be proven either right or wrong. If we didn't act passively, the
failure would be partly our fault. In any case, if we didn't get back
to Earth, hatred and fear of the Martians would inevitably arise
there, whether it had been the Martians' fault or ours. The message
that Miller had left for newscast might only give people the
self-righteous attitude that Earthly intentions had been good. If
another expedition ever came to Mars, it might shoot any inhabitants
on sight, and maybe get wiped out itself.
Still, how could we know that the Martians weren't preparing the kind
of invasion of Earth that has been imagined so often? It was a corny
notion, but the basis for it remained sound. Mars was a dying world.
Couldn't the Martians still want a new planet to move to?
All these old thoughts popped back into my head during that very bad
moment. And if I was almost going for my pistol, how much worse was it
for Craig, Klein and Miller, who hadn't been as friendly with Etl as I
had been? Maybe we should have put our weapons out of our own reach,
in preparation for this incident. Then there would have been no danger
of our using them.
But any freedom of action was swiftly wrested from us. The Martians
rolled over us in a wave. Thousands of dark tendrils with fine,
sawlike spines latched onto our bodies. I was glad that I wore a
spacesuit, as much from the revulsion I felt at a direct contact as
for the small protection it gave against injury.
* * * * *
I am sure that there was panic behind that wild Martian rush. To get
us pinned down and helpless quickly, they drove themselves in spite of
their own fear of the horrid human forms. For did I feel a tremor in
those tendrils, a tendency to recoil from me? I was trembling and
sweating. Still, my impressions were vivid. Those monsters held us
down as if they were Malay beaters holding down trapped pythons. Maybe
they had known beforehand what men looked like--from previous, secret
expeditions to Earth. Just as we had known about Martians from Etl.
But it wouldn't have made any difference.
Or perhaps they weren't even aware that we were from the neighboring
planet. But it would be obvious that we were from another world;
nothing from their own planet could be so strange.
Our own reactions to the situation differed a little. Craig gasped
curses through his helmet phones. Miller said, "Easy, men! Easy!" It
was as if he were trying to build up his own morale, too. I couldn't
utter a sound.
It wasn't hard for our captors to recognize our weapons. We were
disarmed. They carried us out into the night and around a hill. We
were piled onto a flat metallic surface. A vehicle under us began to
throb and move; you could have called it a truck. The nature of its
mechanism was hinted at only by a small, frosty wisp of steam or vapor
up front. Perhaps it came from a leak. The Martians continued to hold
us down as savagely as ever. Now and then a pair of them would join
the nerve-ends of tendrils, perhaps to converse. Others would chirp or
hoot for no reason that I could understand.
The highway rolled away behind us, under the light of Phobos.
Buildings passed, vague as buildings along a road usually are at
night. It was the same with the clumps of vegetation. Lights, which
might have been electrical, flashed into my eyes and passed by. In a
deep valley through which we moved in part of our short trip, a dense,
stratified fog arose between the lights and me. I noticed with an odd
detachment that the fog was composed of minute ice crystals, which
glinted in the glow of the strange lamps. I tried to remember our
course. I knew that it was generally east. Off in the night there were
clangings and hisses that might have been factory noises.