Ten (Stories) to The Stars

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  He said a lot more. Maybe when he was finished talking the tightrope path to a great future was a little tighter and steadier. But you can’t end all the danger of the years and of chance and of opposed life or factions with mere fright and example.

  We were back in Camp Copernicus, staggering tired, before the Lunar midnight. Frank and I slept. Joe must have too. But when we awoke, he was gone. Joe wasn’t the kind of guy to ask permission from anybody to do anything. If anybody tried to block his way by force he’d just watch his chance and slip past the obstacles by stealth. I was scared for him but what good did that do? I had my mineralogy job—the thing I’d signed up for—to look after. And Frank was tied up with his air-conditioning. But Joe had his work cut out for him. It was all he could do here.

  He was gone a full terrestrial week that first solo trip. I hardly believed it when the news came that he was back. For I was sure by then—with a lump in my throat—that he was gone for good—that his naivete where science was concerned had tripped him up in an environment where there were so many horrible ways of dying if you didn’t know exactly what you were doing.

  But evidently Joe had learned enough of space-suits and things by observation, during our first excursion of discovery, to keep alive if nothing went too wrong.

  He almost grinned at Kopplin, Frank and myself as he unloaded his pack in Kopplin’s quarters. And it came to me that he hadn’t changed much—it was as though that pack of his was full of skins from a trapping season and he was back at the trading post.

  He had bits of queer fabric, colored blue. He had a wonderful camera. He had pieces of plating, that might have come from a blown-up space-ship. And he had some jeweled ornaments worth a dozen fortunes as artwork.

  “You did fine, Joe,” Colonel Kopplin said.

  “Sure,” Joe answered and I knew that there was a certain vanity in him. “I go back right away.”

  A few hours later we saw him trudging off across the crater-bottom, a lonely but contented figure, forever devoted to the wilderness—on Earth or elsewhere.

  This time his luck, his intuition or his guardian demon seemed to desert him. For he did not return. After a Lunar day—almost an Earth-month—we went to look for him. Far out from Copernicus his tracks ended at the edge of an expanse of flaky ash more treacherous than quicksand. Even our probing radar-beams couldn’t locate his remains at its bottom.

  So long, Joe Whiteskunk. You were a true trail-blazer. You came much farther than you could ever have realized.

  A year passed. Camp Copernicus became a little city, with all the comforts of civilization—with beautiful gardens—even under shining domes. It was the seed of the glory of the future—if our luck held. Of trans-spatial empire. Mines began really to produce. Great factories began to work. But of course our human dreams and plans were already far ahead.

  Girls came to the Moon to work in offices, as lab technicians. And that, of course, was the surest sign of the success of our colony. One girl—a tiny dark-haired dynamo with the love of strangeness and millions of miles in her eyes—smiled at me. But how I happened to smile back and how we became Joan and Dave to each other is really another story.

  In our factories on the Moon men of Earth built their first true interplanetary craft. From knowledge learned by their own right—and from what they were able to glean from wreckage left by the Martians and Asteroidians.

  Mars was that craft’s goal—or, more specifically, the deepest part of Syrtis Major, that great dark marking near its equator. A sea-bottom—verdant, compared to the cold Martian deserts. Once densely populated—a seat of culture. We knew that much from the fragment of a map that we had found.

  I was one of a hundred men who said good-by to all that we knew. Frank, my twin, and Colonel Kopplin were others. And there was one little gray jolly man named Dimitri Vasiliev—from that other nation. A noted physicist. Was it a compliment to the practicality of the Brotherhood of Man and a promise of the great future of humanity, after the failure of the Martians and the Asteroidians, that he was one of us and our friend?

  “On to Mars—on to mystery,” he laughed—and his eyes shone with the same hopes that were ours. Proving again that there are fewer villains than some would have us believe—and that, from close up, people are just people.

  Oh, yes—it sounds good. And we felt the triumphant vanity of it. But maybe it is an over-simplification. That path to the future is a tightrope in more ways than one. Everything is a gamble. And the bigger goal—not just Mars—was far, far off. Not just cities in the star-systems. But dreams that we couldn’t clearly see.

  Immortality—cosmic greatness to which we knew that only the minds of our distant descendants could ever be equal. We were still too primitive. Still, we were on the right track and might win, where the Asteroidians and Martians had failed. We’d seen their ruined and deserted fortresses—triumphs of technology that had not been enough.

  Maybe our greatest encouragement was the fabulous sum that was paid just for motion-picture rights of what we would see on Mars. Aside from food, comfort and love, nothing is easier to sell, even to the timidest stay-at-home, than high romance.

  Our luck held. We left the Moon in a blaze of atomic fire. Several months were spent hurtling in a great arc that joined two planetary orbits. We laughed, we speculated, we worried, we cursed, we grew bored—but Mars swelled to a great murky opal, at once ugly and beautiful, and we landed in the deepest part of Syrtis Major just as we had intended. Ah, but we were a proud lot then, looking back at our conscious determination, courage and skill!

  They say that pride goeth before a fall. And so, by a little oversight somewhere, it happened. Maybe in space, under the electro-magnetic emanations of the sun, or even by the friction of our ship’s hull with the atmosphere of two worlds, we acquired an electric charge, which became the cause of a hot spark just as we touched the Martian soil. We’ll never know just what was the cause.

  Ever try to imagine a flash-fire inside a space-ship, where all your stores and your oxygen are sealed up? We could have all died very quickly. Eleven of us did. The rest of us got out of the ship in space-suits, most of us burned in various degrees. But were we any better off?

  To the individual death is the end of the universe. The triumph of now and the triumphs of the far future can’t matter much. And all we were, here on the Red Planet, was a bunch of blundering fools, as good as dead, without the best part of our supplies.

  No, Mars isn’t dead like the Moon. The sky we stared at was not black but deep blue. Go to a fifty-thousand-foot altitude on Earth and you’ve got about the same air-pressure—but still a lot more oxygen than on Mars. Want to try to breathe that thin desiccated atmosphere, even though a comfortable noon-day temperature of nearly seventy degrees might encourage you?

  Nope—you’re not built right—you’d be the devil’s own fool. The Martians are gone—they aren’t there anymore to keep that atmosphere healthy with their science.

  Colonel Kopplin was yelling, “Get the stuff out! Got to salvage what we can!” And those of us who were able were trying to obey. The fire was out soon, smothered by the Martian air mostly. But almost all of our oxygen supply was gone. And our water tank had been ripped open by the explosion of a big oxygen flask, weakened by the heat. The last of the precious liquid dribbled away into the powdery soil.

  At last we stood panting and helpless. Inside myself I was saying, “Good-by, Jan. Good-by, dreams.”

  The scene around us, I guess, was beautiful. Ruins were everywhere—fused down to lumpy masses of glassy stuff, millions of years ago, by atomic heat in that last war. And everything was overgrown with blue-green papery vegetation, that stirred idly in a thin breeze. The sea-bottom that was Syrtis Major spread for miles all around and far off in the sunlight to the east we could see the ochre line of the desert.

  “To find water is our only chance,” Kopplin was saying. “We’ve still got the equipment to electrolyze it—to free the oxygen in it to breathe. But
where, short of the polar regions, will you find water on a planet whose remaining total supply wouldn’t more than fill a couple of our Great Lakes?”

  “We could find the lowest ground here,” Frank growled. “Try to dig a well.”

  Vasiliev nodded. He was a plucky little man. Maybe we were all plucky or we wouldn’t have been where we were. But what good was that against grinding homesickness—besides all the rest of our misfortunes?

  But we began to get the necessary equipment together. We figured we had maybe five hours’ air-supply left. A space-suit can be equipped for a long jaunt afield. But running for your life from a fire you can’t always be fully prepared. A seal is made imperfectly. An air-purifier lacks adjustment. And if you’ve got anything to share part of it goes to pals who aren’t so fortunate as you.

  Wishful thinking at a time of despair, they say, can produce strange delusions. So now I saw a ghost stepping out from behind some weird Martian shrubbery. Lord knows that was all I could think then—because I couldn’t know the simple train of events that had made the impossible true.

  Yeah, I saw Joe Whiteskunk. And he wasn’t even wearing space-armor. But from a disc strapped to the top of his head a faintly luminous aura flowed down over his ragged shirt and dungarees. A Martian invention—I didn’t even think about it then. But that was the way it was. An aura which took up all the functions of our clumsy space-suits—protection from cold, air-purification, maintenance of pressure.

  He was surrounded by a tough bubble of energy.

  “Hi, Dave,” he said and his voice was hoarse and rustling and dry. “Yup—me. Joe.” He was as thin and brown and withered as a dry root. And he staggered a little. But his eyes were clear. Funny how his voice reached me through my helmet phones though I saw no transmitter. But that’s ancient Martian science.

  “No water down in valley,” Joe croaked. “Little spring close by too small. Too many men. Water always bitter. So what? Sometimes I smell water higher up toward desert. I never look though. Now do, eh? Glad to see you boys again. Hi, Frank.”

  He showed us the twenty-foot hole he’d dug. There were a couple of spoonfuls of brackish muck at its bottom. Wildly we dug further, only to find dry sand into which the trickle vanished.

  “Just spoil spring,” Joe grumbled. “Now we go look.”

  “Toward the desert?” Kopplin growled. “That’s against both science and common sense! I’ll take a digging party down to lower ground.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Fair enough. Just on the chance that Joe is right I’ll take another party and go with him.”

  We were too intent on water and survival even to ask how Joe happened to be here, even though it seemed more impossible than any miracle. But I got around to inquiry as our group—which included Vasiliev—started out.

  “Gonna tell us about you, Joe?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “I found Mars space-ship on Moon. Nothing broke. I crawl inside. Press wrong button. Ship start for home. Big city here once in this valley. Home to machine that think, inside ship. Ship over there—maybe five miles.” Joe grinned.

  Far off I saw the burnished hull gleaming in the sunshine.

  “How do you live, Joe?” I demanded.

  “Had my supplies. Had space-tent,” Joe answered. “Now eat hard fruit. And big slow bugs. Taste good when hungry. No game. Plenty gold ornaments though—and stuff for houses. Vases—very nice. Maybe now we start business, eh, Dave?”

  “You’re crazy, Joe,” I growled.

  Under Joe’s guidance, we dug for water. Twice we got nothing. But the third time, fourteen feet down, we got a muddy swirl of brackish stuff that widened to a pool. It was all that we needed. Distillation could get the mineral out of it, if we weren’t squeamish about what we drank.

  By radio we learned that Kopplin’s party was still looking. They hadn’t found anything.

  Little Vasiliev laughed gleefully. “I guess there are neglected branches of science,” he said. “About hunches—that is what you call them, is it not? About pigeons finding their way home. About your friend ‘smelling’ water . . .”

  Sure. Joe Whiteskunk is an Indian—probably not quite an ordinary one. Maybe this story is mostly about him. Maybe it’s about those deeper sciences. Or about fate and destiny and luck. Or about pride and humbleness. Or how simple life reaches out, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. Or about high romance . . .

  I know how Joe managed to live alone on Mars. But I don’t know how his mind stood it—how he escaped going mad. Maybe, like a primitive thing, he just didn’t realize where he was—and that saved him. Maybe his luck was just a matter of being part of nature.

  Nature is a word that covers a lot of ground. An atom, an amoeba, a galaxy—and everything in between. But they all must be joined together someway, be in sympathy and understanding. And maybe Joe’s flesh is part of that understanding. That’s why he always seems to know.

  After our misfortunes most of us were fed up with Mars. The romance thinned. We wanted to go home to rest and brag. We could fix up our ship now—or maybe even use the Martian one, refitting it to be a little more comfortable for human occupation.

  On my fourth day on Mars I said, “Joe—how would you like to be back on the ranch for a while?”

  Joe thought about it. Then he answered, “No go. Stay here. Nice place. Plenty room. You go, Dave.” His black eyes were on the distance. “Got plenty business here,” he added.

  None of us left for over seven months. By then we had a little camp set up—not much different, though far smaller, than Camp Copernicus. Maybe it’ll be our first Martian city before long.

  I left with the ship—I had to. But Frank stayed, and Vasiliev and a few others. I took Joe’s “trade stuff” along. Golden ornaments, plaques, vases, strange carvings, stuff worth an emperor’s ransom—because civilized people love high romance and call it beautiful. Does Joe really understand? I wonder.

  I’ve brought Joan, my wife, back to Mars with me. Life goes on. Joe doesn’t show up here much anymore. He’s browner and more withered than ever. But with the help of decent food he’s a lot spryer than he used to be. And his eyes are young. Has he found something like the fountain of youth too? Or is it just that the thirty-eight-percent-of-Earth-norm gravity of Mars is easy on old muscles? Search me.

  Yesterday I saw him trudge off again toward the desert. He seems to belong here as much as the tattered Martian plants. I couldn’t have believed that possible, once. Joe’s a real trail-blazer. He doesn’t understand galaxies. Stars are still just little specks in the sky to him.

  But there must be a drive and an understanding in his blood and bone and nerves. Perhaps it’s a vast primitive yearning. It’s the kind of thing that will lead us out to the farthest galaxies, maybe a thousand years from now, if our luck holds. But it’s not distance alone. It’s grandeur, dimly seen. It’s mind, comprehension, mystery. Maybe it’s a matter of becoming demigods. Who knows? And don’t ask me. Dream it up yourself.

  Maybe we of Earth will be the ones to do it—though the Martians and the Asteroidians failed.

  The End

  **********************************

  A Step Farther Out,

  by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Super Science Stories March 1950

  Novelette - 13225 words

  Knowing himself eternally lost, Harvey Vellis set out

  alone on a journey no brave man would have dared—

  not to the rotting jungles of Venus, or the chill deserts

  of Mars, but— A STEP FARTHER OUT

  CHAPTER ONE

  FIFTY miles from the great spaceport at White Sands, New Mexico, the approaching roads end in guardposts and barbed wire. But before that lethal circumference is reached, signboards warn:

  RADIOACTIVE DUST. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

  ARE YOU WEARING YOUR RESPIRATOR?

  WHAT DOES YOUR GEIGER COUNTER SAY?

  Beyond the guardposts and wire, no sane man ventures on the surface withou
t wearing radiation armor. The spaceport itself is reached by tube-trains. The tunnels in which they move are bored far beneath the poisoned desert, where the dust of countless rocket takeoffs and landings has made even the cacti still more grotesque and monstrous by disturbing their genes.

  Lead, superheated and vaporized by a slow chain-reaction of the fissionable metals with which it is alloyed, is the chief constituent of the incandescent gases ejected by the atomic jet-motors of spacecraft. It congeals to a heavy, tainted powder, which, fortunately, soon settles to the ground, limiting the radius of its poisonous effect.

  Within the restricted area, there are, of course, no towns left, and almost no buildings except the heavily-shielded structures of the spaceport itself, depots, hotels, and covered gangways by which passengers can enter the space liners without contact with the atmosphere.

  Such, then, is the hell-guarded gate to High Romance.... But something of its essence reaches out much farther than the dust of mankind’s greatest adventuring. Some might call it another, more insidious poison. Others, a stimulant, a tonic. To White Sands, life-hungry youth comes from far and wide, seeking a future on a frontier that can never be used up. But more certainly than from anywhere else, they come from nearby—from the ranches, the farms, and the little crossroad towns near the fringes of the circle of death.

  For in such places, the call, the fascination, is forever present, and can never be forgotten. There, hour after hour, day and night, the incandescent trails of rockets, are visible. They are both awful and beautiful. They tingle one’s spine with a joy that is at the edge of fear. One's mind associates with them the names of places such as Vananis, Mars, or Finchport, Venus. Ah, yes—how sweet and rotten smells the jungle, in one’s fancy; and how strange and thrilling is that desert world called Mars, where man cannot live without his oxygen helmet and his dome-cities, where once there was a great native civilization that destroyed itself, but where youth labors and dreams now, to build a smaller, and perhaps better earth....