The Menace From Earth ssc

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The little spheres were like that in appearance. He touched one. It was smooth as crystal and had the same chaste coolness, but it was soft as jelly. It quivered like jelly, causing the lights within it to dance delightfully, before resuming its perfect roundness.

  Pleasant as they were, they did not look like food, whereas the cheesy, soapy lump might be. He broke off a small piece, sniffed it, and tasted it tentatively. It was sour, nauseating, unpleasant. He spat it out, made a wry face, and wished heartily that he could brush his teeth. If that was food, he would have to be much hungrier.

  He turned his attention back to the delightful little spheres of crystallike jelly. He balanced them in his palms, savoring their soft, smooth touch. In the heart of each he saw his own reflection, imagined in miniature, made elfin and graceful. He became aware almost for the first time of the serene beauty of the human figure, almost any human figure, when viewed as a composition and not as a mass of colloidal detail.

  But thirst became more pressing than narcissist admiration. It occurred to him that the smooth, cool spheres, if held in the mouth, might promote salivation, as pebbles will. He tried it; the sphere he selected struck against his lower teeth as he placed it in his mouth, and his lips and chin were suddenly wet, while drops trickled down his chest. The spheres were water, nothing but water, no cellophane skin, no container of any sort. Water had been delivered to him, neatly packaged, by some esoteric trick of surface tension.

  He tried another, handling it more carefully to insure that it was not pricked by his teeth until he had it in his mouth. It worked; his mouth was filled with cool, pure water — too quickly; he choked. But he had caught on to the trick; he drank four of the spheres.

  His thirst satisfied, he became interested in the strange trick whereby water became its own container. The spheres were tough; he could not squeeze them into breaking down, nor did smashing them hard against the floor disturb their precarious balance. They bounced like golf balls and came up for more. He managed to pinch the surface of one between thumb and fingernail. It broke down at once, and the water trickled between his fingers — water alone, no skin nor foreign substance. It seemed that a cut alone could disturb the balance of tensions; even wetting had no effect, for he could hold one carefully in his mouth, remove it, and dry it off on his own skin.

  He decided that, since his supply was limited, and no more water was in prospect, it would be wise to conserve what he had and experiment no further.

  -

  The relief of thirst increased the demands of hunger. He turned his attention again to the other substance and found that he could force himself to chew and swallow. It might not be food, it might even be poison, but it filled his stomach and stayed the pangs. He even felt well fed, once he had cleared out the taste with another sphere of water.

  After eating he rearranged his thoughts. He was not dead, or, if he were, the difference between living and being dead was imperceptible, verbal. OK, he was alive. But he was shut up alone. Somebody knew where he was and was aware of him, for he had been supplied with food and drink — mysteriously but cleverly. Ergo — he was a prisoner, a word which implies a warden.

  Whose prisoner? He had been struck by a LaGrange fireball and had awakened in his cell. It looked, he was forced to admit, as if Doc Graves had been right; the fireballs were intelligently controlled. Furthermore, the person or persons behind them had novel ideas as to how to care for prisoners as well as strange ways of capturing them.

  Eisenberg was a brave man, as brave as the ordinary run of the race from which he sprang — a race as foolhardy as Pekingese dogs. He had the high degree of courage so common in the human race, a race capable of conceiving death, yet able to face its probability daily, on the highway, on the obstetrics table, on the battlefield, in the air, in the subway and to face lightheartedly the certainty of death in the end.

  Eisenberg was apprehensive, but not, panic-stricken. His situation was decidedly interesting; he was no longer bored.

  If he were a prisoner, it seemed likely that his captor would come to investigate him presently, perhaps to question him, perhaps to attempt to use him in some fashion. The fact that, he had been saved and not killed implied some sort of plans for his future. Very well, he would concentrate on meeting whatever exigency might come with a calm and resourceful mind. In the meantime, there was nothing he could do toward freeing himself; he had satisfied himself of that. This was a prison which would baffle Houdini-smooth continuous walls, no way to get a purchase.

  He had thought once that he had a clue to escape; the cells had sanitary arrangements of some sort, for that which his body rejected went elsewhere. But he got no further with that lead; the cage was selfcleaning — and that was that. He could not tell how it was done. It baffled him.

  Presently he slept again.

  -

  When he awoke, one element only was changed — the food and water had been replenished. The "day" passed without incident, save for his own busy fruitless thoughts.

  And the next "day." And the next.

  He determined to stay awake long enough to find out how food and water were placed in his cell. He made a colossal effort to do so, using drastic measures to stimulate his body into consciousness. He bit his lips, he bit his tongue. He nipped the lobes of his ears viciously with his nails. He concentrated on difficult mental feats.

  Presently he dozed off; when he awoke, the food and water had been replenished.

  The waking periods were followed by sleep, renewed hunger and thirst, the satisfying of same, and more sleep. It was after the sixth or seventh sleep that he decided that some sort of a calendar was necessary to his mental health. He had no means of measuring time except by his sleeps; he arbitrarily designated them as days. He had no means of keeping records, save his own body. He made that do. A thumbnail shred, torn off, made a rough tattooing needle. Continued scratching of the same area on his thigh produced a red welt which persisted for a day or two, and could be renewed.

  Seven welts made a week. The progression of such welts along ten fingers and ten toes gave him the means to measure twenty weeks — which was a much longer period than he anticipated any need to measure.

  He had tallied the second set of seven thigh welts on the ring finger of his left hand when the next event occurred to disturb his solitude. When he awoke from the sleep following said tally, he became suddenly and overwhelmingly aware that he was not alone!

  There was a human figure sleeping beside him. When he had convinced himself that he was truly wide awake — his dreams were thoroughly populated — he grasped the figure by the shoulder and shook it. "Doc!" he yelled. "Doc! Wake up!"

  Graves opened his eyes, focused them, sat up, and put out his hand. "Hi, Bill," he remarked. "I'm damned glad to see you."

  "Doc!" He pounded the older man on the back. "Doc! For Criminy sake! You don't know how glad I am to see you."

  "I can guess."

  "Look, Doc — where have you been? How did you get here?

  Did the fireballs snag you, too?"

  "One thing at a time, son. Let's have breakfast." There was a double ration of food and water on the "floor" near them. Graves picked up a sphere, nicked it expertly, and drank it without losing a drop. Eisenberg watched him knowingly.

  "You've been here for some time."

  "That's right."

  "Did the fireballs get you the same time they got me?"

  "No." He reached for the food. "I came up the Kanaka Pillar."

  "What!"

  "That's right. Matter of fact, I was looking for you."

  "The hell you say!"

  "But I do say. It looks as if my wild hypothesis was right; the Pillars and the fireballs are different manifestations of the same cause — X!"

  -

  It seemed almost possible to hear the wheels whir in Eisenberg's head. "But, Doc ... look here, Doc, that means your whole hypothesis was correct. Somebody did the whole thing. Somebody has us locked up here now."
<
br />   "That's right." He munched slowly. He seemed tired, older and thinner than the way Eisenberg remembered him. "Evidence of intelligent control. Always was. No other explanation."

  "But who?"

  "Ah!"

  "Some foreign power? Are we up against something utterly new in the way of an attack?"

  "Hummph! Do you think the Russians, for instance, would bother to serve us water like this?" He held up one of the dainty little spheres.

  "Who, then?"

  "I wouldn't know. Call 'em Martians — that's a convenient way to think of them."

  "Why Martians?"

  "No reason. I said that was a convenient way to think of them."

  "Convenient how?"

  "Convenient because it keeps you from thinking of them as human beings — which they obviously aren't. Nor animals. Something very intelligent, but not animals, because they are smarter than we are. Martians."

  "But ... but — Wait a minute. Why do you assume that your X people aren't human? Why not humans who have a lot of stuff on the ball that we don't have? New scientific advances?"

  "That's a fair question," Graves answered, picking his teeth with a forefinger. "I'll give you a fair answer. Because in the present state of the world we know pretty near where all the best minds are and what they are doing. Advances, like these couldn't be hidden and would be a long time in developing. X indicates evidence of a half a dozen different lines of development that are clear beyond our ken and which would require years of work by hundreds of researchers, to say the very least. Ipso facto, nonhuman science.

  "Of course," he continued, "if you want to postulate a mad scientist and a secret laboratory, I can't argue with you. But I'm not writing Sunday supplements."

  Bill Eisenberg kept very quiet for some time, while he considered what Graves said in the light of his own experience.

  "You're right, Doc," he finally admitted. "Shucks — you're usually right when we have an argument. It has to be Martians. Oh, I don't mean inhabitants of Mars; I mean some form of intelligent life from outside this planet."

  "Maybe."

  "But you just said so!"

  "No, I said it was a convenient way to look at it."

  "But it has to be by elimination."

  "Elimination is a tricky line of reasoning."

  "What else could it be?"

  "Mm-m-m. I'm not prepared to say just what I do think — yet. But there are stronger reasons than we have mentioned for concluding that we are up against nonhumans. Psychological reasons."

  "What sort?"

  "X doesn't treat prisoners in any fashion that arises out of human behavior patterns. Think it over."

  -

  They had a lot to talk about; much more than X, even though X was a subject they were bound to return to. Graves gave Bill a simple bald account of how he happened to go up the Pillar — an account which Bill found very moving for what was left out, rather than told. He felt suddenly very humble and unworthy as he looked at his elderly, frail friend.

  "Doc, you don't look well."

  "I'll do."

  "That trip up the Pillar was hard on you. You shouldn't have tried it."

  Graves shrugged. "I made out all right." But he had not, and Bill could see that he had not. The old man was "poorly."

  They slept and they ate and they talked and they slept again. The routine that Eisenberg had grown used to alone continued, save with company. But Graves grew no stronger.

  -

  "Doc, it's up to us to do something about it."

  "About what?"

  "The whole situation. This thing that has happened to us is an intolerable menace to the whole human race. We don't know what may have happened down below —"

  "Why do you say 'down below'?"

  "Why, you came up the Pillar."

  "Yes, true — but I don't know when or how I was taken out of the bathysphere, nor where they may have taken me. But go ahead. Let's have your idea."

  "Well, but — OK — we don't know what may have happened to the rest of the human race. The fireballs may be picking them off one at a time, with no chance to fight back and no way of guessing what has been going on. We have some idea of the answer. It's up to us to escape and warn them. There may be some way of fighting back. It's our duty; the whole future of the human race may depend on it."

  Graves was silent so long after Bill had finished his tocsin that Bill began to feel embarrassed, a bit foolish. But when he finally spoke it was to agree. "I think you are right, Bill. I think it quite possible that you are right. Not necessarily, but distinctly possible. And that possibility does place an obligation on us to all mankind. I've known it. I knew it before we got into this mess, but I did not have enough data to justify shouting. 'Wolf!'

  "The question is," he went on, "how can we give such a warning — now?"

  "We've got to escape!"

  "Ah."

  "There must be some way."

  "Can you suggest one?"

  "Maybe. We haven't been able to find any way in or out of this place, but there must be a way — has to be; we were brought in. Furthermore, our rations are put inside every day — somehow. I tried once to stay awake long enough to see how it was done, but I fell asleep —"

  "So did I."

  "Uh-huh. I'm not surprised. But there are two of us now; we could take turns, watch on and watch off, until something happened."

  Graves nodded. "It's worth trying."

  Since they had no way of measuring the watches, each kept the vigil until sleepiness became intolerable, then awakened the other. But nothing happened. Their food ran out, was not replaced. They conserved their water balls with care, were finally reduced to one, which was not drunk because each insisted on being noble about it — the other must drink it! But still no manifestation of any sort from their unseen Captors.

  After an unmeasured and unestimated length of time — but certainly long, almost intolerably long — at a time when Eisenberg was in a light, troubled sleep, he was suddenly awakened by a touch and the sound of his name. He sat up, blinking, disoriented. "Who? What? Wha'sa matter?"

  "I must have dozed off," Graves said miserably. "I'm sorry, Bill." Eisenberg looked where Graves pointed. Their food and water had been renewed.

  Eisenberg did not suggest a renewal of the experiment. In the first place, it seemed evident that their keepers did not intend for them to learn the combination to their cell and were quite intelligent enough to outmaneuver their necessarily feeble attempts. In the second place, Graves was an obviously sick man; Eisenberg did not have the heart to suggest another long, grueling, half-starved vigil.

  But, lacking knowledge of the combination, it appeared impossible to break jail. A naked man is a particularly helpless creature; lacking materials wherewith to fashion tools, he can do little. Eisenberg would have swapped his chances for eternal bliss for a diamond drill, an acetylene torch, or even a rusty, secondhand chisel. Without tools of some sort it was impressed on him that he stood about as much chance of breaking out of his cage as his goldfish, Cleo and Patra, had of chewing their way out of a glass bowl.

  -

  "Doc?"

  "Yes, son."

  "We've tackled this the wrong way. We know that X is intelligent; instead of trying to escape, we should be trying to establish communication."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. But there must be some way."

  But if there was, he could never conjure it up. Even if he assumed that his captors could see and hear him, how was he to convey intelligence to them by word or gesture? Was it theoretically possible for any nonhuman being, no matter how intelligent, to find a pattern of meaning in human speech symbols, if he encountered them without context, without background, without pictures, without pointing? It is certainly true that the human race, working under much more favorable circumstances, has failed almost utterly to learn the languages of the other races of animals.

  What should he do to attract their attention, stimulate
their interest? Recite the "Gettysburg Address"? Or the multiplication table? Or, if he used gestures, would deaf-and-dumb language mean any more, or any less, to his captors than the sailor's hornpipe?

  -

  "Doc?"

  "What is it, Bill?" Graves was sinking; he rarely initiated a conversation these "days."

  "Why are we here? I've had it in the back of my mind that eventually they would take us out and do something with us. Try to question us, maybe. But it doesn't look like they meant to."

  "No, it doesn't."

  "Then why are we here? Why do they take care of us?"

  Graves paused quite a long time before answering: "I think that they are expecting us to reproduce."

  "What!"

  Graves shrugged.

  "But that's ridiculous."

  "Surely. But would they know it?"

  "But they are intelligent."

  Graves chuckled, the first time he had done so in many sleeps. "Do you know Roland Young's little verse about the flea:

  -

  "A funny creature is the Flea

  You cannot tell the She from He.

  But He can tell — and so can She."

  -

  "After all, the visible differences between men and women are quite superficial and almost negligible — except to men and women!"

  Eisenberg found the suggestion repugnant, almost revolting; he struggled against it. "But look, Doc — even a little study would show them that the human race is divided up into sexes. After all, we aren't the first specimens they've studied."

  "Maybe they don't study us."