The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “I can’t put my finger in it,” Alice said, “but it’s more like something else . . . hmm.”

  They both jumped, nerves tight, as the deathly silence was broken.

  “A moan,” said Mack, sweeping his flash around frantically. “One of them must be alive.”

  “Over there, John . . . under that heap of leathery stuff. Quick, the light.”

  Mack thrust the flashlight in her hands and yanked junk away, unburying the moaning figure, quite whole and alive.

  “How could one be alive? But then, freak accidents happen. Cars overturn, smash, people step out without a scratch. What luck, John! What great good luck. A live one. A live Martian, or some citizen of some world. Carry it out.”

  Since it had humanoid form, they carried it out as they would a man, Mack at the armpits, Alice at the legs.

  “Heavy,” grunted Mack. “Can you manage? I’ll call one of the men.”

  “John, dear. You’ve seen me lift plenty heavy things at the lab. Let’s not be gallant, shall we?”

  Sure, she could do anything a man could do. Maybe that’s why she didn’t need a man, or want a man, unless he was a man. Peek-a-boo, I see inside you too, sister. And the more I see inside you . . . yes, the more I love you, damnit. But I’ve got to forget it. Laugh it off. Haven’t laughed in a year.

  “Careful,” Alice was saying. “Might have broken bones. Internal injuries. Just get him outside the ship, in the shade of the globe. Any of your men handy with a first-aid kit?”

  But they found it unnecessary, outside. The visitor lay a moment in the hot sand, blinking and whimpering in pain, then suddenly sat up, staring around. In another moment he was struggling to his feet and stood swaying, but apparently not more than bruised and shaken.

  In the sunlight, they saw the space voyager in full detail. Taller than a man by two feet and proportionately bulky. Covered with silken-fine fur from top to toe, his head matted with a thick tangle of pale brown. An enormous chest expansion and thick arms and legs.

  “Narrows down to a Martian more and more,” said Alice. “Big chest for thin air. Huge bulky body easily carried around in the light gravity. And plenty of fat protection against Martian cold.”

  “But that face,” said Mack, disturbed. “Idiotic—”

  Alice frowned. It was true. The quasi-intelligent face had fallen slack, vapid. Smiles flitted briefly over the sensitive twitching mouth. But the smiles of a moron. Of a vacant mind.

  “Insane,” said Alice, in deep pity. “Completely psychotic. And no wonder. The first trial flight through space, with all its nerve-wracking unknowns and tense fears. The jitters as they realized they couldn’t brake enough, were going to crash on Earth. The final awful landing, with the ship bursting to bits before his eyes—as it must have seemed to him. And probably his thoughts were shrieking, “No! To die here, never meet the Earthmen, never return! Enough to unhinge any mind.”

  “Poor chap,” murmured Mack. All his dreams blasted. Columbus of space and that sort of thing. I can see it too, his mind smashing when the ship did.”

  The Martian—for so they thought of him now—stared only vaguely back at them, his eyes shifting and darting all over. But without real awareness. He had no idea it was a new world. Nor did he remember the trip through space, or anything. He grinned at them almost like a child, in a dream world of his own.

  Suddenly he sat down heavily and played with the sand.

  “Gravity too strong for him,” Alice nodded. “At least his self-protective instincts are working.” But little else, that was plain. The Martian played with the sand like a kid and started to babble a meaningless garble. At times he interjected squeals that might be empty laughter, at nothing.

  “It’s enough to drive me crazy,” growled Mack. “The first Martian to visit Earth in history, and he’s out of his mind. His home planet, his civilization, what propelled his ship—and how we’d like to know that—but we’ll never know any of it from him . . .”

  “Not so fast, John.” Alice rubbed her hands, briskly. “Ever hear of insanity being cured? It’s done every day, you know. Electroshock, drug therapy, psychiatric hypnotism, a whole bag of tricks to be tried. If he has anything approaching a human mind, I think something can be done. And I’m going to start working on him right away. With your permission, major?”

  Mack snapped a cigarette far over the sand. “You’re a qualified psychologist of Space Medicine, as well as biologist. You don’t need orders from me. Go to it and good luck, Alice. Hope you can yank that poor critter out of his black pit.”

  While I stay in mine.

  A week later, at the base hospital, Dr. Alice Wright greeted Major John Mack’s umpteenth visit with the umpteenth shake of her head.

  “No luck, John. The language barrier is insurmountable, I guess. A psychiatrist’s main tool, really, is ideas. New and saving thoughts he gets through to the sick mind. But ideas can only be given with words. And unfortunately, I don’t know Martian.”

  “This can be a big thing for both of us,” said Mack for the umpteenth time. “If you can lick it and cure him, we’ll both get kicked upstairs like a rocket.”

  “Dreaming of eagles, John? Or even a star?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Mack evenly. “I know they wouldn’t impress you a bit. That was the last time I asked you—before the Martian came. Strictly business between us now, Dr. Wright. Fix up that mad Martian and we both feather our nests.”

  “Mad Martian,” laughed Alice, in her sudden way. “I like that, John. Sounds like a melodrama. You do say the funniest things at times—”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” said Mack stiffly.

  “No . . . no, I guess you weren’t.” Alice’s throaty chuckle died into a sigh. “This is all too serious to be funny, isn’t it?”

  She gave him a queer look that Mack couldn’t fathom at all. He didn’t try. He didn’t care anymore. He turned on his heel and strode out. Yes, it was serious to him, this Martian thing. Washington was in an uproar about it, of course. The whole country was. The whole world.

  The first Martian. The first anything, from space, from another world. He had dropped out of the clear blue sky, into Mack’s lap. A bonanza of fame. Major Mack first greeted the Martian . . . his name would always be linked with it. We give you Colonel Mack, ladies and gentlemen, who first welcomed the Martian.

  And as long as he didn’t think of Alice, who hadn’t dropped into his lap, he walked on air. Sometimes he didn’t think of Alice for ten minutes at a stretch. The Martian crowded her out. The mad Martian. Funny? Sure it was funny. Ha ha. But he’d laugh for real, someday, with eagles on his shoulders and Alice off of them. Someday . . .

  The next time Mack came in, he tried to put it gently.

  “Bad news, Alice—for you. I tried to hold them off, give you more time. Washington is whipping up a top-notch team of psychologists and psychiatrists to work over the Martian.”

  Alice laughed, shockingly. It was almost a hysterical laugh. “Tell Washington to forget it. It won’t do a bit of good.

  Mack blew out a gust of smoke. “Now look, Alice. I know you’re good, and you did your best. But after all, there are other trained mental experts. Come, Doctor. Isn’t it childish of you to be peeved?

  Jealous?”

  She laughed again. Mack sat down, bewildered. It was like someone laughing in all the wrong places at a movie.

  She controlled herself with an effort. “Let them come. Let them find out for themselves if they wish. I’m just trying to save the tax-payers’ money.”

  “Find out what? What are you driving at?”

  “That they’ll never cure this space visitor of his so-called insanity.”

  “So-called? You mean the Martian isn’t insane?”

  “I mean he isn’t a Martian,” said Alice sweetly.

  Mack turned red. “All right, so he’s a Venusian or Jovian or from another star. Of all the childish things, Alice. Why didn’t you say right out he’s not fro
m Mars?”

  “But he is from Mars, John dear.”

  “If you wore a military uniform,” said Mack, “I’d have you shot at sunrise. He’s not a Martian but he’s from Mars. Alice—your mind—?”

  Alice smiled. “I’m only a maniac when my nylons run. Follow me, John, if you please.”

  She led the silent, wondering officer into the hall and finally into one ill-smelling room. She waved around.

  “I’m not blind,” Mack said fumingly. “The mice and rats and monkeys we use in test rocket flights. What’s that got to do with—”

  Mack stopped. He filled ten long seconds with dead silence detonating thoughts. Then—“Alice! No—you can’t mean—?”

  She made a tsk-tsk, directed at herself. “Would we send precious humans to the Moon or Mars, on the first flight! Very likely the first crew landing on the Moon will be captained by one of his relatives.”

  She was feeding Bebop a banana.

  “Then the ‘Martian’—the whole ‘crew’—” Mack choked, unable to go on. Laughs were choking him, up from his toes.

  Alice laughed too. “Now you know what to tell Washington before they make fools of themselves, like I did for a week. Brilliant, am I? The Martian wore no clothes. I didn’t even stop to think of myself stepping out on Mars—in the nude.”

  Alice was feeding a banana now to the huge furred form jabbering in the cage next to Bebop. “All right, I deserve it, John. Laugh at me all you want.”

  “No—no,” gasped Mack. “Me, and my silver eagles! I polished the damned things a hundred times in the past week. And even in a daydream that’s work. Colonel John Mack, who greeted the first Martian . . . monkey. What could be funnier. Wait’ll I tell this at the Officer’s Club.”

  Alice took off her glasses and stared, as if seeing a real Martian. “But the joke’s on you, John. I could always laugh at myself. But you . . . John, you have got a sense of humor. You have after all . . . darling!”

  Mack nearly fainted at the kiss.

  He finally got his voice working. “Alice, don’t tell me. That’s what you were looking for all the time? That’s what you poked around inside me to find? Not—not—?”

  “Bravery?” supplied Alice quickly. “You poor male idiot. How many dragons would I need to be rescued from? In psychology, it’s the man who can laugh at himself that can lick anything, including his worst enemy—himself. One good laugh by plain John, on serious old Major Mack, and you could have bought the ring months ago, you poor wonderful nincompoop.”

  “I’ll be a monkey’s—” Mack grinned and started over. “I’ll be a Martian monkey’s uncle.”

  THE VIOLATORS

  Some wonderful odds and ends of Mother Earth had escaped the fiery incinerator of Time. And the most significant of all—metallic, angular and ancient—Lem Starglitter Blake carried proudly in his dirty old prospector’s bag.

  HE WAS excited, the little man with the big find.

  He drove his battered old space tub down at the world which lay frozen over and lifeless since long ago. But not completely abandoned. Far from it.

  He joined the long line of ships making the pilgrimage to the ancient, original home of the human race. Below lay a transparent dome, the largest Z-model of 100,000 capacity, into whose ample entry locks the ships filed down, one by one. Some had to circle, waiting their turn. Fie licked his lips impatiently. At times he grinned and savored the delay, in view of what lay ahead.

  At last he chugged in and parked his grimy little tub beside shiny yachts and towering spaceliners and spacebuses. The canned air of the dome was fresh to his lungs, compared to the reek of his cabin. He dug a tip out of his frayed jeans for the parking attendant, not quite daring to snub him. He winced at the sneer over the small coin.

  But no more sneers like that, soon. And plenty more money, with what he had in his bag. He smiled and mumbled as he walked away, swinging the leather bag at his side, bulging with something angular.

  He filed his way among others toward the turnstiles leading to tire main exhibit area. Tourists, vacationers, families with kids, school groups, newsmen, galactic trotters, earnest scholars. You could find all types here, from every walk of life and from any distant planet, drawn like a magnet to this “must” for all travelers. It was the sight to see around the Milky Way.

  Certainly nothing could beat its appeal as the birthplace of mankind. Nothing, that is, except the gay and fabulous Carnival of 50

  Castor, whose attendance record could never be topped.

  He tried to rush through the turnstile but was halted by the green-clad guard.

  “I’m in a hurry, mister,” he mumbled in his wispy voice, from an oxygen-burned throat. He began opening his bag. “Look what I found—”

  The guard heard not a word. “We keep a register of all visitors to Mother Earth. Name? Home World? Occupation?”

  It was odd how even the guard’s routine voice lowered a tone on the words “Mother Earth.”

  “Lem Starglitter Blake,” said the little old man in unkempt jeans and patched boots.

  The guard’s lip twitched slightly. Lem Blake wished he had left out the middle name. Why had parents of that generation taken to such frothy names? Red-faced, Blake went on with a rush. “Born on Antares IV. Prospector for ore strikes. But listen, I made the biggest strike of all. Not ore but—”

  “Next,” said the guard.

  Lem Blake swallowed the rest and moved on. People wouldn’t treat him that way later, he consoled himself in secret gloating, clutching his bag. He could take it for a short time more without bitterness.

  Another guard eyed the bag sternly. “I must warn you, sir, there is no souvenir hunting allowed here. Understand, sir?”

  “I’m not going to take anything,” Blake tried to protest. “I’m bringing something—”

  “Your bag will be emptied and examined when you leave,” dismissed the guard.

  They were all so big and important in their flashy uniforms. But just wait, thought Blake, just wait. We’ll see who’s big and important later.

  But Blake could see why they were so cautious. All around, enclosed in the giant plastic bubble, were the hoary ruins of a city, moldered to fragility. If the hordes of visitors were allowed to snatch souvenirs, tire place would be picked dean as a bone.

  ANCIENT NEW YORK, said a sign, MAIN CITY OF HOME EARTH IN PRESPACE DAYS.

  People stared in the proper awe due such time-honored relics of antique glory. It was from this terribly old civilization that the race of starmen had sprung, inheriting the galaxy. Various individual exhibits among the rains were labeled—a broken wheel, a shred of tapestry under glass, a coil of wire, pottery, bits of jewelry, a bleached human skull. Odds and ends that had escaped the incinerator of time. There wasn’t much left after 140 rock-wearing centuries.

  Priceless, those few dozens of relics. Lem Blake grew excited again at what lay in his bag. It would command a price, maybe enough to stake him to years of good food, new clothes, his tub overhauled, leisure and fun. Maybe more, much more. It all depended.

  Blake knew all the busy guards would ignore him. He must reach higher authority. He hurried to the central auditorium where the staff lecturer spoke sonorously to the hushed crowd packed shoulder to elbow. Blake took a long breath at the outer fringes and began squeezing his way closer to the rostrum. It was slow work in the human jam. He heard the speech as he struggled on.

  “—though today we are born and live and die on many worlds, my fellow humans, we all come from the original stock of this particular planet. It was from this small and quite backward 20th century world that mankind leaped to the stars.”

  Lem Blake suddenly choked on a chuckling thought in the dead quiet of the listening throng. A circle of eyes transfixed him at the unspeakable crime. Mumbling apologies, Blake pressed on.

  Professor John Nova McKay went on with the stock lecture. How many times had it been repeated now, some 80,000? He himself had delivered it over a thousand times. It
was hard to keep the monotony out of his tones.

  “Ships roared into space at the end of the 20th century. First, to explore and pioneer on nearby worlds of the same sun. By the 25th century, they had the Hyper Drive, permitting speeds greater than light. Then began the second phase of building a galactic commonwealth. Those were days of glory.”

  The speaker tried to lift his voice on those words but it fell flat in his own ears. But the audience hung on it, caught in the dramatic thought that their own feet stood where all that had started.

  “This is all ancient space history going back 14,000 years, and many of its details and records are lost. But we know that by the 30th century we humans ranged all through the Milky Way, settling, colonizing, setting up trade with native races. Worlds existed in vast numbers, many habitable.”

  Blake stopped muttering apologies as he elbowed his way inch by inch. The apologies drew frosty frowns, and were the last thing they wanted. They wanted silence. Only Blake’s bag insisted on clanking now and then. He kept on doggedly.

  Professor McKay’s voice rolled over the rapt faces. “Today, there are over a million commonwealth planets, about half under native rule, friendly to us. On the other half no native intelligence survived, and they thus became our own home planets. Earthmen came to dominate the galaxy but only in the sense that they were the single largest and most prolific race.”

  McKay’s dry voice quickened now, as the most unique part of the stock historical story came at last. “But strangely, during that era of galactic expansion, Earth itself gradually faded out of the picture. More and more people left, seeking better homes, richer opportunities, more desirable locations and neighborhoods in the galaxy. Population fell on Earth.

  “This was all hastened and brought to a focus when the sun of Earth suddenly began dimming in the 49th century. An old star, that sun died. In a short time, by the cosmic clock, another ice age fell on Earth—the final one. The oceans froze solid and all land areas turned to bleak wasteland.”