Godson of Almarlu: A Collection of Science Fiction Novellas

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Twice we found two medium-sized pearls. Once it was the link of a golden chain, and a cut ruby. Several mornings yielded a pair of golden coins, too worn to identify. Delivery was usually in pairs. It got so that, whenever we didn’t find two of something, we figured that Brunder must have found its other, companion piece.

  One dawn, we thought we heard the xylophone. Later, in the sunshine, we were sure we glimpsed a flash of green and gold, thirty yards out from the rocks.

  “Something really ought to happen soon,” Alice said that day. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were back with us by tomorrow. And have you two decided yet whence came all the things of treasure—and how?”

  She was kidding. The answer was more or less obvious, wasn’t it? I thought of two small beings from Mars, lugging gifts up from the undersea in their flippers.

  “Marty and Martia were with us long enough to begin to understand humans,” I chuckled. “Maybe they feel obligated to us. Or maybe these presents are peace offerings for their running away. Or perhaps tribute is being paid to Earthly music and friends.”

  To myself I thought of the ocean—little known to me beyond looking at its surface, except from pictures: The sunlight turning violet deep down, and then fading to blackness more awesome than that of space. Submerged mountains and unexplored valleys. Hidden wealth. The skeletons of ships. Beautiful gardens of anemones. Weird, fantastic world. The monsters of the deeps. Could Marty and Martia go even there—letting the fluids of their flesh become gradually compressed, until it thus assumed an internal counterpressure to hold back the terrible weight of the ocean above, and keep them from being crushed? Perhaps they could. For it was said that even warm-blooded whales, accustomed to the surface, could dive hundreds of fathoms deep. And, to defend themselves against enemies, our Martian pair and their probable offspring had their stings and their intelligence.

  Alice’s optimism about a possible reunion the next day, proved less than groundless. For, for the first time in many mornings, we found nothing of value on the shore. Week followed week, and it was the same. There were no more gifts, and no more indications of any kind that the creatures Terry and I had found on the Red Planet were still somewhere off the coast.

  July passed, and half of August. In spite of the gifts from the sea—of limited value—our funds were getting low. I felt that we had about reached the end of a phase, for good. And we used to think that we’d get rich! Oh, sure! I was aware of a lot of time wasted, instead. Yet I felt sad in another way, too.

  Terry and Alice also looked sad. But now they received some offers to play for people, again. Terry did have a lot of talent: Marty and Martia had given him something completely new, and he had developed it, adding elements of his own.

  As for me, I’m an active sort. I couldn’t just hang around forever. For one thing, space was beckoning me back to it. So I said, “Well, kids—when do we break this up?’’

  “Soon, I guess, Dad,” Alice answered, “It has been a whole year. But we’ll always have to check back here now and then.”

  “Yeah, honey,” I agreed.

  Perhaps it was queer, but Brunder was still around. But Marty and Martia had been the big thing in his life, too; so he was just as persistent as we were. Maybe he thought that something might still break, and give him what is supposed to be at the end of the rainbow. He was living up in the village, somewhere. I kept glimpsing him, with that cat of his, along the shore. And quite often I saw Toby roaming by himself. He knew Terry and me, and he’d come to the house, and Alice would give him a handout.

  So Toby became the key to a vital point. You know the affinity that cats and dogs have for smelly objects. I saw Toby one morning at the back of our garden by the brook. He had something in his mouth. It consisted of two long ropy ends, connected by a slender cord. Yeah—nameless refuse, you’d say it was.

  But something about it—I didn’t know what—aroused my interest. So I approached Toby, and he growled a warning.

  “Steady, Tomcat,” I said. “Do you expect to chew through whatever that is? It looks pretty tough.”

  He growled again, and made his fur, marked like a tiger’s, bristle. But now I got a better look at what he had. The two clublike ends of the object seemed to be composed of a mixture of clay and fibre, cemented together. It could be brook-clay, and the cellulose from aquatic plants.

  After that, my blood began to pound, and I was in no mood to let Toby argue with me. “Thanks, Tomcat," I said. "Remind me to give you a whole steak sometime. But—come on, now—I want that!”

  I got a clawed hand out of the deal; Toby got a swat on his ear, for which I should apologize.

  I felt of the two tapered objects—joined together like two old friends who didn’t want to lose each other. Then I hollered:

  “Terry! Alice! Come here quick! . . .”

  We put what Toby had found into a plastic tank that had been empty for a year. We poured water shallowly over it. Then we waited and drank pots of coffee, and paced up and down and speculated.

  “They must have swum up the brook from the ocean,” Terry said. “After that, scrambling overland among so much unfamiliar vegetation, maybe they got lost trying to find our house. It’s been hot and dry most of this summer—really hot for anything Martian. Besides, Marty and Martia are mainly aquatic. They can't live out of water forever, and even the brook is almost dry this far from the sea. But they had a Martian way to keep alive—no, there are certain fish in African rivers that encase themselves in mud during the season when there is almost no water . . . Anyway—dammit—I hope that now everything is as fine as it seems! . . .”

  Just about everything was fine. By noon that day, Marty and Martia were out of their cocoons, swimming in their tank and trilling out our names and words that they hadn’t forgotten, apparently delighted to be in our company again, after a year of complete freedom in an ocean of a strange, alien planet:

  "Hhelllo-o-o-o, Tterrreee! Aaalllizzz! Ppoppaiee-ee! . . . Thhhannkzzz! Wweee cumm baaaackkkk! . . .”

  Yes—the legend had returned. I got on the phone. Minutes later the world knew about it. I guess most everyone remembers how it was. Within an hour we were swamped with newscast people, and sponsors, and representatives from every phase of the entertainment industry. Also, there were serious scientists. It looked like the bonanza once more—but bigger than ever.

  But Terry didn’t want to sign any contracts. I thought that he must have gained in practical worldly knowledge, and was playing hard to get—a smart thing to do, with what we had.

  “Give us a couple of weeks time, to see about several matters,” was what he said to the commercial and television and theatrical people.

  Alice and he proceeded to teach Marty and Martia a larger vocabulary. “They’re folks, as far as we are concerned,” he reminded me. “They have the intelligence and feelings of folks. And this time they must understand us and speak well enough to tell us what they want—as is their right.”

  While admitting some suspicions of more frustrations on the way, I found myself agreeing with all this. It couldn’t be otherwise.

  So at last Terry put it to them. “What’ll it be, Friends?” he asked. “Do you want to go traveling and making music with us, again? Or are you homesick for the northern icecap of Mars, under the dark blue sky? I know that you must be as restless as your music. Or is it something else that you want? There are many possible places and situations. There is even the zoo, or the museum—though I don’t think I’d recommend either . . .”

  No—Marty and Martia didn’t answer right away. First they touched fins there in their tank. Then they swam around each other in a kind of dance. Finally Marty put his flippers against the plastic of the tank, and words buzzed out:

  “Nnottt nnowww Mmarrrzz orrr ttrraavvellll . . . Bbbetterrr nneww thhinnngzzz . . . Ttryy zzzooo . Ttryy mmuuzzee-ummm . . .”

  "Zoo? Museum?” Terry protested. “But that’ll be like prison, Marty!”

  “Zzoe—Mmuuzzeeum!�
�� Marty persisted, and Martia echoed his words.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  I’m afraid Terry Miklas was prejudiced. He didn’t want to lose Marty and Martia as his tour-partners. I don’t think it was the money so much—not with him. Rather, it was like having close friends who choose a separate path, and so are partly lost.

  Now Alice put in her two cents worth. “Maybe they don't know what they’re talking about, Terry,” she said. “Who does, when they try something new—especially so new as the ways of another planet? Marty and Martia have to find out things for themselves. So, from their viewpoint, you could be wrong.”

  Well, Terry Miklas had a nice mild grin, in defeat. He shrugged. “All right, Music from Polar Mars,” he said. “My very best wishes, and we’ll still see each other around.”

  Then he looked at me, and the look said something which I’d already sensed. We used to talk about selling the Pisces Martis to zoos or museums or big scientific organizations for a heavy price. It was still possible, as far as such institutions and so forth were concerned. Funds were no doubt available. And I don’t think that Marty and Martia would have minded being exchanged for money in the least, nor would have felt in the least enslaved, thereby. For it is known, now, that money to them is just a quaint human custom, not influencing their liberty an iota. But still we had our own ethics to follow—rigid and necessary for us. We did not sell a humanly intelligent friend as a chattel. To do so was now unthinkable. Wherever Marty and Martia went, they went by their own choice, as responsible individuals. So again, for us, the Bonanza had to slip away.

  Everybody knows how it has been. Marty and Martia are in New York, now—in the Museum of Natural History. But they’ve been flown around to many cities. They have a big tank, now, full of Martian and Earthly aquatic plants, and a hundred gadgets for Marty to fool with and examine, and for them both to tinkle out their haunting tunes, on. Their ancestors couldn’t have lived more luxuriously, even in the days of Mars’ ancient glory. Scientists from everywhere keep studying them, and asking them questions. They even have books printed on waterproof parchment. It seems that their special attendant, Professor Harwind, is teaching them to read. And so, for the time being at least, their care-free, primitive existence, colored only by music, has been tainted by civilized industriousness.

  Children love them, of course, and love the eerie trills and soaring, elfin chords, as of a tiny xylophone, that often speaks with words, too. But even tough spacemen, fresh from the mines of Callisto or Ganymede, come to watch and listen and wonder. And everyone else has seen and heard—if only by television and recording. Yes, there is something gentle and fascinating about the legendary mood that is Marty and Martia—even when it is pinned down, to be easily examined.

  Alice and Terry? They struck out on their own, and are already a famous musical couple in their own right—making something new and fresh and truly their own, out of the art they borrowed. Perhaps it is final satisfaction and the end of restlessness for Terry Miklas. But sometimes they go back to see Marty and Martia, and put on a joint show with them, for the kids who come to the museum.

  But I remember one time—not so very long ago, it was—when I dropped in to the museum to see Marty and Martia, as I still do quite often.

  They understood and spoke human language a lot better by then, being quick to learn. So I said: “Suckers. Sloths. Cooped up here. Independence sold for comfort. Shame! A legend must be free . . .”

  “Ssommtimme wwee ggo-o,” Marty buzzed on the glass of the tank in answer. "Whennn neww thhinnggzz callll . . . Wwe arrr alllwwayzz ffrreeee . . .”

  I guess Marty is right. When they want out, they’ll say so. Popular opinion is on their side. And if this weren’t so, they still have the cleverness to escape. To be a little like animals on display doesn’t hurt their pride at all. By the way people like them and react to them, they are like prisoners who can walk through walls—if they are prisoners at all. Besides, they have plenty of time. Scientists, questioning them, have found that their life span is something more than three hundred Earth-years. So sometime they’ll wander away again.

  Marty said something more to me, that time; “Ssuckkerr! Mmenn expllorr ddisstanttt pplannettzzz . . . Fforgggett ddeeeppp oshhunn. Sstranngge.’

  I took the hint. In fact the idea had been revolving in my mind for some time. First I bought some recordings of Marty’s and Martia’s music, right there in the museum store. Guess who I found there? Yeah—Brunder. Oh, yes—he’d been around at the house up in Maine, after Marty and Martia got back. “Hi, Durbin," he said without rancor.

  I felt lonesome. Besides, there was something in the air—like the lion lying down with the lamb, maybe. Or would you say, instead, that we were just a couple of old goats?

  “I got an idea, Brunder,” I said. “Maybe sometime I’ll get rich after all."

  “Possibly I got the same idea, Durbin," Brunder intimated. “I also bought some used deep-sea diving equipment, cheap. Now if you could scrape enough money together to buy or rent an old launch, some place . . .”

  Well, in a matter of a week or so, Brunder and I were off the Maine coast together. We were a couple of grouchy old spacemen, trying a new racket that intrigued us. Toby, the tomcat, was dozing in the engine-room. We had an underwater sound-system, through which we were playing some elfin music, which originated on another planet.

  I went down a rope in a deep-sea diving suit, which is a little like a space suit, but is two hundred times as heavy. When I had been down there about an hour, I met a little green and gold critter who liked what our sound-system was playing, looked like some old friends of ours, though he wasn’t full-grown, yet, and clearly wanted to be friendly.

  Oh, we had to converse with him on a number of occasions, give him the legendary name of Neptune, and teach him some English words. But pretty soon he got the idea of what we wanted, and led us right to the broken strong-box of an old, sunken sailing ship. Then he found us another vessel. The take in antique jewelry and money wasn’t very great, but it kept us going.

  We kept working at the salvage business, with Neptune as our locator. We even conversed with him about another legend—the one about Lost Atlantis—but he doesn’t have any information.

  Finally, however, we had a heavy bathyspheric submarine built, atom-powered for real deep-sea diving. Yeah—funny how when space travel began, people forgot about the strange rich world of the deep ocean. Because down there, with Neptune’s assistance, we have tapped about the richest deposit of uranium ore that has ever been found any place . . .

  The End

  ******************************

  The Old Faithful Saga, Raymond Z. Gallun, Renaissance eBooks 2004 (c, ebook) - 46800 words

  Introduction, Jean Marie Stine, (in) *

  Old Faithful [*Old Faithful], (nv) Astounding Dec. 1934 - 14768

  The Son of Old Faithful [*Old Faithful], (nv) Astounding July 1935 - 14207

  Child of the Stars [*Old Faithful], (na) Astounding April 1936 - 17913

  A First Glimpse and Other SF Classics, Raymond Z. Gallun, Renaissance eBooks 2006 (c, ebook) - 94,500 words or so

  Introduction, Jean Marie Stine, (in) *

  Comet’s Burial, (ss) Science Fiction Stories #1 1953 – 6766

  Hotel Cosmos, (ss) Astounding July 1938

  Prodigal’s Aura, (nv) Astounding April 1951

  Stamped Caution, (nv) Galaxy Aug. 1953 – 11618

  Davy Jones’ Ambassador, (nv) Astounding Dec. 1935

  Brother Worlds, (nv) Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb. 1951

  Seeds of the Dusk [*When Earth is Old], (nv) Astounding June 1938 – 10703

  Invaders of the Forbidden Moon, (nv) Planet Stories Summer 1941 – 16507

  A First Glimpse, (nv) Analog Feb. 1980

  Mind Over Matter: A Collection of Short Fiction, Raymond Z. Gallun, Tom's eBooks May 2021 (c, ebook) - 110,900 words

  Introduction, Tom Dean, (in) *

 
The Crystal Ray, (ss) Air Wonder Stories Nov. 1929 – 5917

  Space Flotsam, (ss) Astounding Feb. 1934 - 3606

  The Machine from Ganymede, (ss) Astounding Nov. 1934 - 3926

  Mind Over Matter, (ss) Astounding Jan. 1935 - 4324

  Blue Haze on Pluto, (ss) Astounding June 1935 - 4382

  Saturn’s Ringmaster, (ss) Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec. 1936 – 3881

  Eyes That Watch, (ss) Comet Dec. 1940 - 5449

  The Raiders of Saturn’s Ring, (nv) Planet Stories Fall 1941 - 11941

  Space Oasis, (ss/nv) Planet Stories Fall 1942 - 9579

  The Eternal Wall, (ss) Amazing Nov. 1942 – 4144

  Operation Pumice, (ss) Thrilling Wonder Stories April 1949 - 5126

  Asteroid of Fear, (nv) Planet Stories March 1951 – 13896

  ü Return of a Legend, (ss) Planet Stories March 1952 - 5529

  ü Big Pill, (nv) Planet Stories Sep. 1952 – 7705

  Captive Asteroid, (nv) Science-Fiction Plus April 1953 - 11231

  Give Back a World, (nv) Planet Stories May 1953 - 8837

  Bonus Story:

  Bright Message, (vi) Collier's Weekly May 18 1946 - 1493

  Godson of Almarlu: A Collection of Science Fiction Novellas, Raymond Z. Gallun, Tom's eBooks May 2021 (c, ebook) - 115,100 words

  Introduction, Tom Dean, (in) *

  The Revolt of the Star Men, (na) Wonder Stories Quarterly Winter 1932 - 27606, PG

  Godson of Almarlu, (na) Astounding Oct. 1936 - 18984

  Fires of Genesis, (na) Astounding March 1937 - 16777

  Iszt—Earthman, (nv) Astounding April 1938 - 16072, PDF

  Coffins to Mars [*Demigods], (na) Thrilling Wonder Stories June 1950 - 20015, ePub* je

  Legacy from Mars, (nv) Science Fiction Adventures July 1953 - 15666

  Bibliography of Gallun collections