by Noel Keyes
“But that glass globe you wish placed on the altar,” protested Father Stone.
“Consider the Chinese,” replied Father Peregrine imperturbably. “What sort of Christ do Christian Chinese worship? An oriental Christ, naturally. You’ve all seen oriental Nativity scenes. How is Christ dressed? In Eastern robes. Where does He walk? In Chinese settings of bamboo and misty mountain and crooked tree. His eyelids taper, his cheekbones rise. Each country, each race adds something to Our Lord. I am reminded of the Virgin of Guadalupe, to whom all Mexico pays its love. Her skin? Have you noticed the paintings of her? A dark skin, like that of her worshipers. Is this blasphemy? Not at all. It is not logical that men should accept a God, no matter how real, of another color. I often wonder why our missionaries do well in Africa, with a snow-white Christ. Perhaps because white is a sacred color, in albino, or any other form, to the African tribes. Given time, mightn’t Christ darken there too? The form does not matter. Content is everything. We cannot expect these Martians to accept an alien form. We shall give them Christ in their own image.”
“There’s a flaw in your reasoning, Father,” said Father Stone. “Won’t the Martians suspect us of hypocrisy? They will realize that we don’t worship a round, globular Christ, but a man with limbs and a head. How do we explain the difference?”
“By showing there is none. Christ will fill any vessel that is offered. Bodies or globes, he is there, and each will worship the same thing in a different guise. What is more, we must believe in this globe we give the Martians. We must believe in a shape which is meaningless to us as to form. This spheroid will be Christ. And we must remember that we ourselves, and the shape of our Earth Christ, would be meaningless, ridiculous, a squander of material to these Martians.”
Father Peregrine laid aside his chalk. “Now let us go into the hills and build our church.”
The Fathers began to pack their equipment.
The church was not a church but an area cleared of rocks, a plateau on one of the low mountains, its soil smoothed and brushed, and an altar established whereon Brother Mathias placed the fiery globe he had constructed.
At the end of six days of work the “church” was ready. “What shall we do with this?” Father Stone tapped an iron bell they had brought along. “What does a bell mean to them?”
“I imagine I brought it for our own comfort,” admitted Father Peregrine. “We need a few familiarities. This church seems so little like a church. And we feel somewhat absurd here—even I; for it is something new, this business of converting the creatures of another world. I feel like a ridiculous play actor at times. And then I pray to God to lend me strength.”
“Many of the Fathers are unhappy. Some of them joke about all this, Father Peregrine.”
“I know. We’ll put this bell in a small tower for their comfort, anyway.”
“What about the organ?”
“We’ll play it at the first service, tomorrow.”
“But, the Martians——”
“I know. But again, I suppose, for our own comfort, our own music. Later we may discover theirs.”
They arose very early on Sunday morning and moved through the coldness like pale phantoms, rime tinkling on their habits; covered with chimes they were, shaking down showers of silver water.
“I wonder if it is Sunday here on Mars?” mused Father Peregrine, but seeing Father Stone wince, he hastened on, “It might be Tuesday or Thursday—who knows? But no matter. My idle fancy. It’s Sunday to us. Come.”
The Fathers walked into the flat wide area of the “church” and knelt, shivering and blue-lipped.
Father Peregrine said a little prayer and put his cold fingers to the organ keys. The music went up like a flight of pretty birds. He touched the keys like a man moving his hands among the weeds of a wild garden, startling up great soarings of beauty into the hills.
The music calmed the air. It smelled the fresh smell of morning. The music drifted into the mountains and shook down mineral powders in a dusty rain.
The Fathers waited.
“Well, Father Peregrine.” Father Stone eyed the empty sky where the sun was rising, furnace-red. “I don’t see our friends.”
“Let me try again.” Father Peregrine was perspiring.
He built an architecture of Bach, stone by exquisite stone, raising a music cathedral so vast that its furthest chancels were in Nineveh, its furthest dome at St Peter’s left hand. The music stayed and did not crash in ruin when it was over, but partook of a series of white clouds and was carried away among other lands.
The sky was still empty.
“They’ll cornel” But Father Peregrine felt the panic in his chest, very small, growing. “Let us pray. Let us ask them to come. They read minds; they know.”
The Fathers lowered themselves yet again, in rustlings and whispers. They prayed.
And to the East, out of the icy mountains of seven o’clock on Sunday morning or perhaps Thursday morning or maybe Monday morning on Mars, came the soft fiery globes.
They hovered and sank and filled the area around the shivering priests. “Thank you; oh, thank you, Lord.” Father Peregrine shut his eyes tight and played the music, and when it was done he turned and gazed upon his wondrous congregation.
And a voice touched his mind, and the voice said: “We have come for a little while.”
“You may stay,” said Father Peregrine.
“For a little while only,” said the voice quietly. “We have come to tell you certain things. We should have spoken sooner. But we had hoped that you might go on your way if left alone.”
Father Peregrine started to speak, but the voice hushed him.
“We are the Old Ones,” the voice said, and it entered him like a blue gaseous flare and burned in the chambers of his head. “We are the old Martians, who left our marble cities and went into the hills, forsaking the material life we had lived. So very long ago we became these things that we now are. Once we were men, with bodies and legs and arms such as yours. The legend has it that one of us, a good man, discovered a way to free man’s soul and intellect, to free him of bodily ills and melancholies, of deaths and transfigurations, of ill humors and senilities, and so we took on the look of lightning and blue fire and have lived in the winds and skies and hills forever after that, neither prideful nor arrogant, neither rich nor poor, passionate nor cold. We have lived apart from those we left behind, those other men of this world, and how we came to be has been forgotten, the process lost; but we shall never die, nor do harm. We have put away the sins of the body and live in God’s grace. We covet no other property; we have no property. We do not steal, nor kill, nor lust, nor hate. We live in happiness. We cannot reproduce; we do not eat or drink or make war. All the sensualities and childishnesses and sins of the body were stripped away when our bodies were put aside. We have left sin behind, Father Peregrine, and it is burned like the leaves in the autumn, and it is gone like the soiled snow of an evil winter, and it is gone like the sexual flowers of a red-and-yellow spring, and it is gone like the panting nights of hottest summer, and our season is temperate and our clime is rich in thought.”
Father Peregrine was standing now, for the voice touched him at such a pitch that it almost shook him from his senses. It was an ecstasy and a fire washing through him.
“We wish to tell you that we appreciate your building this place for us, but we have no need of it, for each of us is a temple unto himself and needs no place wherein to cleanse himself. Forgive us for not coming to you sooner, but we are separate and apart and have talked to no one for ten thousand years, nor have we interfered in any way with the life of this planet. It has come into your mind now that we are the lilies of the field; we toil not, neither do we spin. You are right. And so we suggest that you take the parts of this temple into your own new cities and there cleanse others. For, rest assured, we are happy and at peace.”
The Fathers were on their knees in the vast blue light, and Father Peregrine was down, too, and they were w
eeping, and it did not matter that their time had been wasted; it did not matter to them at all.
The blue spheres murmured and began to rise once more, on a breath of cool air.
“May I”—cried Father Peregrine, not daring to ask, eyes closed—“may I come again, someday, that I may learn from you?”
The blue fires blazed. The air trembled.
Yes. Someday he might come again. Someday.
And then the Fire Balloons blew away and were gone, and he was like a child, on his knees, tears streaming from his eyes, crying to himself, “Come back, come back!” And at any moment Grandfather might lift him and carry him upstairs to his bedroom in a long-gone Ohio town . . .
They filed down out of the hills at sunset. Looking back, Father Peregrine saw the blue fires burning. No, he thought, we couldn’t build a church for the likes of you. You’re Beauty itself. What church could compete with the fireworks of the pure soul?
Father Stone moved in silence beside him. And at last he spoke:
“The way I see it is there’s a Truth on every planet. All parts of the Big Truth. On a certain day they’ll all fit together like the pieces of jigsaw. This has been a shaking experience. I’ll never doubt again, Father Peregrine. For this Truth here is as true as Earth’s Truth, and they lie side by side. And we’ll go on to other worlds, adding the sum of the parts of the Truth until one day the whole Total will stand before us like the light of a new day.”
“That’s a lot, coming from you, Father Stone.”
“I’m sorry now, in a way, we’re going down to the town to handle our own kind. Those blue lights now. When they settled about us, and that voice . . .” Father Stone shivered.
Father Peregrine reached out to take the other’s arm. They walked together.
“And you know,” said Father Stone finally, fixing his eyes on Brother Mathias, who strode ahead with the glass sphere tenderly carried in his arms, that glass sphere with the blue phosphorous light glowing forever inside it, “you know, Father Peregrine, that globe there——”
“Yes?”
“It’s Him. It is Him, after all.”
Father Peregrine smiled, and they walked down out of the hills toward the new town.
MAN THE DISCOVERED
Invasion from Mars
by HOWARD KOCH
NARRATOR: We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool, and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.
It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30, the Crossley service estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios.
ANNOUNCER CUE: . . . for the next twenty-four hours not much change in temperature. A slight atmospheric disturbance of undetermined origin is reported over Nova Scotia, causing a low-pressure area to move down rather rapidly over the northeastern states, bringing a forecast of rain, accompanied by winds of light gale force. Maximum temperature 66; minimum 48. This weather report comes to you from the Government Weather Bureau.
ANNOUNCER TWO: We now take you to the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.
(Spanish theme song . . . Fades)
ANNOUNCER THREE: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. From the Meridian Room in the Park Plaza in New York City, we bring you the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra. With a touch of the Spanish, Ramon Raquello leads off with “La Cumparsita.”
(Piece starts playing)
ANNOUNCER TWO: Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrel of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars.
The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving toward the earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson of the Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell’s observation, and describes the phenomenon as (quote) like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun (unquote). We now return you to the music of Ramon Raquello, playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown New York.
(Music plays for a few moments until piece ends . . . Sound of applause)
Now a tune that never loses favor, the ever-popular “Star Dust.” Ramon Raquello and his orchestra . . .
(Music)
ANNOUNCER TWO: Ladies and gentlemen, following on the news given in our bulletin a moment ago, the Government Meteorological Bureau has requested the large observatories of the country to keep an astronomical watch on any other disturbances occurring on the planet Mars. Due to the unusual nature of this occurrence, we have arranged an interview with the noted astronomer, Professor Pierson, who will give us his views on this event. In a few moments we will take you to the Princeton Observatory at Princeton, New Jersey. We return you until then to the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.
(Music)
ANNOUNCER TWO: We are ready now to take you to the Princeton Observatory at Princeton, where Carl Phillips, our commentator, will interview Professor Richard Pierson, famous astronomer. We take you now to Princeton, New Jersy.
(Echo chamber)
PHILLIPS: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is Carl Phillips, speaking to you from the observatory at Princeton. I am standing in a large semicircular room, pitch-black except for an oblong split in the ceiling. Through this opening I can see a sprinkling of stars that cast a kind of frosty glow over the intricate mechanism of the huge telescope. The ticking sound you hear is the vibration of the clockwork. Professor Pierson stands directly above me on a small platform, peering through the giant lens. I ask you to be patient, ladies and gentlemen, during any delay that may arise during our interview. Beside his ceaseless watch of the heavens, Professor Pierson may be interrupted by telephone or other communications. During this period he is in constant touch with the astronomical centers of the world—Professor, may I begin our questions?
PIERSON: At any time, Mr. Phillips.
PHILLIPS: Professor, would you please tell our radio audience exactly what you see as you observe the planet Mars through your telescope?
PIERSON: Nothing unusual at the moment, Mr. Phillips. A red disk swimming in a blue sea. Transverse stripes across the disk. Quite distinct now because Mars happens to be at the point nearest the earth—in opposition, as we call it.
PHILLIPS: In your opinion, what do these transverse stripes signify, Professor Pierson?
PIERSON: Not canals, I can assure you, Mr. Phillips, although that’s the popular conjecture of those who imagine Mars to be inhabited. From a scientific viewpoint the stripes are merely the result of atmospheric conditions peculiar to the planet.
PHILLIPS: Then you’re quite convinced as a scientist that living intelligence as we know it does not exist on Mars?
PIERSON: I should say the chances against it are a thousand to one.
PHILLIPS: And yet how do you account for these gas eruptions occurring on the surface of the planet at
regular intervals?
PIERSON: Mr. Phillips, I cannot account for it.
PHILLIPS: By the way, Professor, for the benefit of our listeners, how far is Mars from the earth?
PIERSON: Approximately forty million miles.
PHILLIPS: Well, that seems a safe enough distance—Just a moment, ladies and gentlemen, someone has just handed Professor Pierson a message. While he reads it, let me remind you we are speaking to you from the observatory in Princeton, New Jersey, where we are interviewing the world-famous astronomer, Professor Pierson . . . One moment, please. Professor Pierson has passed me a message which he has just received. Professor, may I read the message to the listening audience?
PIERSON: Certainly, Mr. Phillips.
PHILLIPS: Ladies and gentlemen, I shall read you a wire addressed to Profesor Pierson from Dr. Gray of the National History Museum, New York. “9:15 p.m. eastern standard time. Seismograph registered shock of almost earthquake intensity within a radius of twenty miles of Princeton. Please investigate. Signed, Lloyd Gray, Chief of Astronomical Division.” Professor Pierson, could this occurence possibly have something to do with the disturbances observed on the planet Mars?
PIERSON: Hardly, Mr. Phillips. This is probably a meteorite of unusual size and its arrival at this particular time is merely a coincidence. However, we shall conduct a search, as soon as daylight permits.
PHILLIPS: Thank you, Professor. Ladies and gentlemen, for the past ten minutes we’ve been speaking to you from the observatory at Princeton, bringing you a special interview with Professor Pierson, noted astronomer. This is Carl Phillips speaking. We now return you to our New York studio.