I was so riled up that night, just thinking it over, that I didn’t get to sleep until late. As a result, it was nearly dawn when I woke up, just in time to see the thing come down from the sky.
I sat up quickly in bed, thinking at first it was one of these here meteorites, but when it got closer, I could see I was wrong. Built something like a fat cigar, it was shooting fire from its fore end like a Fourth of July roman candle. It’s speed was falling off quick, and, as it got nearer to the ground, it slowed up until, when it finally touched, it did so almost gentle.
It suddenly came to me that it’d landed right smack in the midst of my corn. I jumped from the bed, hurried into my trousers, and ran over to the closet for the shotgun, I rammed two buckshot shells into the breech and was out the door and started across the fields in less than a minute, half dressed and with my shoelaces trying to trip me up as I ran.
I could hear Betty and Beth stomping in terror in their stalls, and the chickens cutting up like as though there was a coyote in with them.
It was too much. I try to tell myself I don’t mind other folks having their cars and their electric devices and even their airplanes, but when they seek me out on my isolated little farm, where I’ve tried so hard to escape the world, and land one of their fantastic new experimental rocket ships in my corn—
Sure enough, a good acre and more of my best golden bantam was nothing more than smoldering stubble. I strode through it wrathfully and pounded on what appeared like the thing’s door with the butt of my gun.
I still can’t say whether it would be proper to call it an airplane. It was considerable larger than any such craft I’d ever seen. But, then, I’m not much up on such things, and I understand the government is spending billions of dollars on the making of such hellish devices, and at such a rate hardly anybody can keep up with all the new flying machines.
It must’ve reached nearly a hundred feet into the air. Its wings, if that’s what you could call them, were short and stubby. The metal—I guess it was metal—on the outside had a queer shimmering look, something like an old mirror that’s had a considerable amount of the mercury stuff on its back dislocated. In spite of all the flame it had been shooting out, it didn’t seem to be hot. I reached out gingerly with a finger and touched its side; it felt cool.
I thumped on the door again, still boiling mad. As poor as I am, this contraption of “progress” had destroyed more than half my sweet corn crop.
The door didn’t open, and I half walked, half stumbled, around the thing. It was as big as a small barn. I couldn’t help but wonder how it ever got up into the air. What a sample of man’s ability! If he only was able to turn his genius to real advancement instead of these here instruments of war and uncontrolled industrial development and its natural result—international trade rivalry, depressions, and all the rest.
By the time I’d circled the big airship, the door had begun to open up, real slow. When a crack finally appeared, there was a sudden whoosh of air, like as though there’d been more pressure inside than outside. I stood there watching, my shotgun under my arm, my lungs almost busting with the want to read them the riot act.
Suddenly the door swung free, and there they were, three of them staring down at me.
Maybe my scorn of men who’ll make war their profession, even in times of peace, colored my outlook too much, but it seemed to me they were the most strange appearing specimens in the half light of morning that I’ve ever seen. Even their clothes were queer, but I guess that’s due to the special uniforms aviators have to wear when they go up in these complicated new rocket airplanes. These wore the most confounded garments I ever laid eyes on.
I glared at them, real belligerent, waiting for some kind of apology. Not that I was expecting to accept it anyways. I was ready to tell them off plenty.
The first of them, the commanding officer, I guess, stared at me a full minute before saying anything. He was a tall man, not a hair on his head, and his eyes were more bright than ordinary. He looked out of place to me, like as though he was really a dreamer, not one who’d spend his life working on rocket propelled super-bombers to kill off his fellow man.
He said finally, “Greetings. This is Terra, is it not?”
A foreigner!
You could tell from the way he talked. He had the heaviest accent I ever heard. I’ve always thought it was bad enough that the government puts thousand of Americans to work figuring out new ways of killing folks, but that they should hire foreign experts also is too much.
“I never heard of the town of Terra.” I snorted, still holding myself in check. “This is Harvey, North Dakota, or leastways, just twenty miles out.” I was about to light into them then, but they threw me off by putting their heads together and jabbering away in some foreign language.
Finally, the leader turned back to me again and said, “We are from Borl, in the Aldeberan System, and bring you the greetings and well wishes of... ”
It was then that I began to boil over.
“So you’re all foreigners! At first I thought you were some American experimental airplane, but now I see I was wrong. You’re foreign military people; ships like this aren’t ever built for peaceable purpose. You come here in your big, fast flying bomber, pretending being peaceful and friendly. Probably next year you’ll come back for another visit, carrying these here atom bombs.”
He tried to stop me, but I went on, blood rushing to my head as I roared, “You come down blasting away with your hellish ship of destruction, scaring my stock half to death, ruining my best sweet corn, and then you have the consarned gall—”
I don’t think he understood more than half of what I was yelling, but he interrupted again before I could catch my breath.
“You don’t understand,” he said, scowling a little bit. “We have ccme to give you the advice and guidance of a more advanced people...”
That was his story, but even if it was the truth and not just more of this here propaganda stuff, I was still hopping mad.
“Advice!” I yelled at him. “Advice! Keep your consarned advice! I been getting more crazy advice from Washington than I know what to do with, without some wiseacre foreigners starting in. How to plant, what to plant, when to plant, how to fertilize, how to put in electricity, how to do this and that, and the other thing. And then what happens? First they teach you how to grow tremendous big crops, and then a depression comes along and they make you destroy them. How many potatoes to pour kerosene on, what crops to plow under, what pigs to shoot, what fruit trees to chop down!”
Everything of the past forty years kind of flashed in front of me. All the results of their quick-growing science and their lack of knowing what to do with it. Their producing more and more products with their new machines, but not having places enough to sell it all. And the whole thing finally blowing up with wars over colonies and sources of raw materials and oil, and markets to dump their surplus manufactured goods. I thought of the loss of Johnny in the first war, and of Cris in the second, and of Ruth’s death by cance. I knew their crazy science is still growing and growing and a sane way of using the things it discovers is yet to be figured out. And I knew they’re preparing for the next war just as fast as ever possible. Their science be hanged!
Finally I stopped for breath.
The commander of the group was beginning to get pretty pale with anger himself by this time. “Such indignity,” he said. “Haven’t you considered the fact that we’ve gone to endless difficulty in making this journey here and in studying your fantastic language by using your radio emanations? And then to land on your barbarian...”
That got me going again. I was mad, too wrought up to make sense in what I was saying, but I yelled back as loud as I could. “Fantastic language! Who told you you could talk it? It’s all a man can do to understand your jibber-jabber. And what do you mean, barbarian? The real savages are you professional soldiers and you scientists who work at death-dealing machines.”
I realized I was talking
so loud and so fast that probably he couldn’t understand me, so I slowed down. “If you don’t like this country, why don’t you go back where you came from?” I yelled real clear.
He stared at me for a long time without saying anything. “That seems an excellent suggestion,” he said finally. “Obviously, we made a mistake in coming at all.” His eyes gleamed almost unhuman-like, he was so mad, and he slammed the door. I could hear the cogs working inside it again, making it air-tight.
I remembered what the blast from its exhausts, or whatever it was, had done to my corn, so I dashed back to get out of the way. A few minutes later the big airship flashed all different color flame from its bottom, and lifted sluggish-like from the ground. It gained speed slowly, then faster, then, with a roar, it streaked up and disappeared into the sky. It was a terrible thing to watch, something like a skyrocket, I thought. A youngster’s toy, developed into an instrument of war that could destroy cities in a few minutes.
I plodded back to the house, exhausted, knowing myself for the old, tired, disillusioned, and bitter man that I am. Only a miracle could save this world of ours from destruction— and I don’t believe in miracles.
* * * *
...Unfortunately, the Aldeberan expedition was a failure, being received with open hostility and belligerence. At the time, some criticism was made of the group’s leader on the grounds that he had left Terra after being influenced adversely by but one inhabitant of the backward planet. Be that as it may, Terra was not visited again until two hundred decals later, following several atomic wars. There were no members of the species homo sapiens left by then.
—From the Encyclopedia Galactica
NOT IN THE RULES
I got the bad news as soon as we landed on Mars. The minute I got off the spacer, the little yellow Martie was standing there with a yellow envelope. He said, “Gladiator Jak Demsi?”
I admitted it and he handed me the envelope. Made me feel kind of good, as though I was somebody important, which I’m not. I’d been taking plenty of guff on the trip.
Not only from Suzi, but from Alger Wilde, who was also along. Yeah, between them they’d ridden me as well as the liner, all the way from Terra.
I handed the Martie a kopek and put the yellow envelope in my pocket, as though I was used to getting spacegrams.
I said to Suzi, ‘‘Let’s hit the chow line.’’ I don’t usually talk that fancy, but I was trying to impress her with my knowledge of antique phrases. Both Suzi and Alger Wilde are students of ancient times and love to lard their conversation with such stuff.
Suzi said, “Sure, Jak. Come on Alger,” which wasn’t what I’d meant at all. And then she said, “Aren’t you going to open that spacegram, Jak? It might be important.”
“Probably is,” I said carelessly. “But it can wait, whatever it is.”
And it did. I opened it after we’d ordered at the spaceport restaurant. I should have waited until after I’d eaten, but I couldn’t know that until I read:
SPACER TRANSPORTING GLADIATOR EARTH-MARS FOR INTER-PLANETARY GAMES LOST. YOU HAVE BEEN APPOINTED EMERGENCY REPLACEMENT REPRESENTING EARTH. GOOD LUCK.
I gulped. If you don’t know all about the Interplanetary Meet which is held every decade, then maybe you don’t know why I gulped. If you do, you do. It’s tough enough being a gladiator on Terra but at least you have a chance of coming out alive; you’ve even got a chance of winning. But at the Interplanetary Meet! Who ever heard of a Terran coming out in one piece? Not to speak of winning.
Sure, I’m a gladiator, but I’ve always been strictly a second rater; in fact, some of the sports writers call me a third rater. Anyway, I’ve always worked in the smaller meets where the gladiators, even when they lose, usually get off with their lives. In the small town stuff, they don’t kill expensive gladiators, if they can help it.
My head was doing double flips trying to figure out some way of making myself scarce, when Suzi said, “What is it, Jak?”
Like a fool, I handed the message to her and she and Alger read it together.
Suzi’s eyes widened and she started to say something, worriedly, but Alger stuck out his hand and said, “Congratulations, Jak. I knew you had great things in you. Now they’ll be coming out… Er… That is, just think, one of the three gladiators representing Terra. What an honor!”
I was sunk.
The Interplanetary Meet was just three days off, and I had three days to live.
I wouldn’t have been on Mars in the first place if it hadn’t been for an argument I had with Suzi back on Terra just before she was scheduled to blast off for Mars to cover the Interplanetary Games. Suzi is a sports reporter, see. She covers the meets from the woman’s angle. What she really wanted to do was write books about primitive culture, and what I wanted her to do was spend the rest of her life being my wife. Neither of us seemed to have much of a chance of making good.
As usual, Suzi was giving me kert. If you’ll pardon my language. “I don’t know why I bother with you, Jak,” she said scowling. “You’ve had the book a week and don’t know a thing about it. You’re nothing but a drip, a square.”
“Listen,” I said resentfully. “Don’t use those mythological terms on me. Last time it took me all day to look them up. Besides, I try don’t I? My manager’s going crazy because I’ve been spending so much time reading instead of training for my next meet.’’
You get the idea. The girl was just gone on the ancients. She wouldn’t have tolerated me for an hour if I hadn’t been willing to let her cram her nonsense into me at every opportunity.
“How long do you expect to be on Mars?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Perhaps three months, Terra time.”
“Three months!”
She patted my hand. “Don’t worry about me, Jak. I’m taking along an extensive micro-film library dealing with the literature and drama of Twentieth Century North America. As you undoubtedly know, it reached its height in the comic books and cartoon movies of the time. Besides,” she went on, “Alger Wilde will be there, covering the meet from the society angle. He’ll be good company. Alger is quite an authority on prehistoric literature.”
“And also on today’s women,” I yelped. “You didn’t tell me that makron was going to be on Mars with you.”
She held her hands over her ears and said indignantly, “Please, Jak, save your vulgarities for the games.”
“I’m going with you,” I grated. “I don’t trust that guy with my woman.”
She flared up at that. “Your woman! Let me tell you, Jak Demsi, when you begin to display the cultural achievements of Alger Wilde, you may begin, just begin, mind you, to think of me as your woman, as you so crudely put it. Meanwhile, I have no desire to link myself with an ignoramus. Besides, I’m beginning to believe that you have no interest in cultural pursuits. You’ve merely deceived me these past months with pretended …”
“Aw, Suzi,” I began.
* * * *
I had trouble enough raising credits for my fare, but more still getting last minute reservations on the crowded excursion liner to Mars. It took some string-pulling on my manager’s part to get me the tickets. Nobody who can raise the credits would dream of missing the Interplanetary Meet, and every spacer to Mars was packed.
Suzi was surprised when I stepped up to her table in the spacer’s lounge. At least, her eyebrows raised. The little minx was as pretty as a Venusian rose-orchid. She was sitting with Alger Wilde, a makron from the word glorm.
“Hi,” I said, using a prehistoric formal salutation in hopes of pleasing her with my knowledge of olden times.
“By Jove,” Alger Wilde exclaimed, “if it isn’t Jak Demsi.” He added, smirking, “Pardon the expression. Jove was an ancient deity. I sometimes slip and use such terms.”
Did he think I was stupid? Hadn’t I been reading up on all that stuff for months? I sat down casually in an empty acceleration chair.
“Of course,” I said.” An Egyptian God; also known as Jupiter b
y their neighbors, the Aztecs, and by the name of Zeus, by the Chinese.”
And that’s the way it was all the way to Mars. I tried to hang on and stick it out with them, but I came in a bad third. I was fighting out of my class. In fact, just before we arrived on Mars, Suzi made it plain that she thought I might as well give up my attempts to become cultured. She said I just didn’t assimilate the stuff, that it didn’t come off on me. I could read whole libraries of the ancient classics and recall none of the significance of what I’d read. In short, I wasn’t doing so good with Suzi.
* * * *
Well, three days after getting the telegram, I met the other two gladiators from Terra in our dressing room at the arena. They weren’t much happier about the meet than I was.
It’s one of the occupational hazards of our trade. If you get too good, you’ll probably be chosen as Terra representative to the Interplanetary Meet and your chances of surviving are almost nil. Of course, the pay is high and your survivors get a big chunk of credits, but it’s a chilly prospect at best.
The other two were pretty well armored and had chosen spears as weapons, but I left off all armor and took a short sword. I planned on moving fast, and the less weight I carried the better.
When the various preliminaries were over and the crowd shouting for the main event, we trotted out to the field, joined the gladiators from the other planets, and paraded toward the stand at which the judges and diplomats were seated. There was a mob of these, each with his assistants and secretaries. You could bet that little that happened would miss them. After all, on this meet hung the destinies of planets.
Thousands of spectators from every planet and every principal satellite in the system stared down from their arena seats. I knew that the majority of them had expended a fortune in transport from their homes and for tickets to the meet. But why not! It was the equivalent of having a box seat at a full scale war of the type held in legendary times. Certainly, the ultimate effect was as great or greater. Each spectator knew that upon the manner in which their planet’s representatives fought this day, their fates depended.
The Second Mack Reynolds Megapack Page 30