“What’s wrong?” said Mrs. Morris.
“Drill’s stuck. Halfway. If we could only get him all the way through, it’d be easier. Then all the others could come through after him.”
“Can I help?”
“No’m, thanks. I’ll fix it.”
“All right. I’ll call you for your bath in half an hour. I’m tired of watching you.”
She went in and sat in the electric relaxing chair, sipping a little beer from a half-empty glass. The chair massaged her back. Children, children. Children and love and hate, side by side. Sometimes children loved you, hated you—all in half a second. Strange children, did they ever forget or forgive the whippings and the harsh, strict words of command? She wondered. How can you ever forget or forgive those over and above you, those tall and silly dictators?
Time passed. A curious, waiting silence came upon the street, deepening.
Five o’clock. A clock sang softly somewhere in the house in a quiet, musical voice: “Five o’clock—five o’clock. Time’s a-wasting. Five o’clock,” and purred away into silence.
Zero hour.
Mrs. Morris chuckled in her throat. Zero hour.
A beetle car hummed into the driveway. Mr. Morris. Mrs. Morris smiled. Mr. Morris got out of the beetle, locked it, and called hello to Mink at her work. Mink ignored him. He laughed and stood for a moment watching the children. Then he walked up the front steps.
“Hello, darling.”
“Hello, Henry.”
She strained forward on the edge of the chair, listening. The children were silent. Too silent.
He emptied his pipe, refilled it. “Swell day. Makes you glad to be alive.”
Buzz.
“What’s that?” asked Henry.
“I don’t know.” She got up suddenly, her eyes widening. She was going to say something. She stopped it. Ridiculous. Her nerves jumped. “Those children haven’t anything dangerous out there, have they?” she said.
“Nothing but pipes and hammers. Why?”
“Nothing electrical?”
“Heck, no,” said Henry. “I looked.”
She walked to the kitchen. The buzzing continued. “Just the same, you’d better go tell them to quit. It’s after five. Tell them—” Her eyes widened and narrowed. “Tell them to put off their Invasion until tomorrow.” She laughed, nervously.
The buzzing grew louder.
“What are they up to? I’d better go look, all right.”
The explosion!
The house shook with dull sound. There were other explosions in other yards on other streets.
Involuntarily, Mrs. Morris screamed. “Up this way!” she cried senselessly, knowing no sense, no reason. Perhaps she saw something from the corners of her eyes; perhaps she smelled a new odor or heard a new noise. There was no time to argue with Henry to convince him. Let him think her insane. Yes, insane! Shrieking, she ran upstairs. He ran after her to see what she was up to. “In the attic!” she screamed. “That’s where it is!” It was only a poor excuse to get him in the attic in time. Oh, God—in time!
Another explosion outside. The children screamed with delight, as if at a great fireworks display.
“It’s not in the attic!” cried Henry. “It’s outside!”
“No, no!” Wheezing, gasping, she fumbled at the attic door. “I’ll show you. Hurry! I’ll show you!”
They tumbled into the attic. She slammed the door, locked it, took the key, threw it into a far, cluttered corner. She was babbling wild stuff now. It came out of her. All the subconscious suspicion and fear that had gathered secretly all afternoon and fermented like a wine in her. All the little revelations and knowledges and sense that had bothered her all day and which she had logically and carefully and sensibly rejected and censored. Now it exploded in her and shook her to bits.
“There, there,” she said, sobbing against the door. “We’re safe until tonight. Maybe we can sneak out. Maybe we can escape!”
Henry blew up too, but for another reason. “Are you crazy? Why’d you throw that key away? Damn it, honey!”
“Yes, yes, I’m crazy, if it helps, but stay here with me!”
“I don’t know how in hell I can get out!”
“Quiet. They’ll hear us. Oh, God, they’ll find us soon enough—”
Below them, Mink’s voice. The husband stopped. There was a great universal humming and sizzling, a screaming and giggling. Downstairs the audio-televisor buzzed and buzzed insistently, alarmingly, violently. Is that Helen calling? thought Mrs. Morris. And is she calling about what I think she’s calling about?
Footsteps came into the house. Heavy footsteps.
“Who’s coming in my house?” demanded Henry angrily. “Who’s tramping around down there?”
Heavy feet. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty of them. Fifty persons crowding into the house. The humming. The giggling of the children. “This way!” cried Mink, below.
“Who’s downstairs?” roared Henry. “Who’s there!”
“Hush. Oh, nononononono!” said his wife weakly, holding him. “Please, be quiet. They might go away.”
“Mom?” called Mink. “Dad?” A pause. “Where are you?”
Heavy footsteps, heavy, heavy, very heavy footsteps, came up the stairs. Mink leading them.
“Mom?” A hesitation. “Dad?” A waiting, a silence.
Humming. Footsteps toward the attic. Mink’s first.
They trembled together in silence in the attic, Mr. and Mrs. Morris. For some reason the electric humming, the queer cold light suddenly visible under the door crack, the strange odor and the alien sound of eagerness in Mink’s voice finally got through to Henry Morris too. He stood, shivering, in the dark silence, his wife beside him.
“Mom! Dad!”
Footsteps. A little humming sound. The attic lock melted. The door opened. Mink peered inside, tall blue shadows behind her.
“Peekaboo,” said Mink.
Nothing Sirius - Fredric Brown
HAPPILY, I was taking the last coins out of our machines and counting them while Ma entered the figures in the little red book as I called them out. Nice figures they were.
Yes, we’d had a good play on both of the Sirian planets, Thor and Freda. Especially on Freda. Those little Earth colonies out there are starved to death for entertainment of any kind, and money doesn’t mean a thing to them. They’d stood in line to get into our tent and push their coins into our machines—so even with the plenty high expenses of the trip we’d done all right by ourselves.
Yes, they were right comforting, those figures Ma was entering. Of course she’d add them up wrong, but then Ellen would straighten it out when Ma finally gave up. Ellen’s good at figures. And got a good one herself, even if I do say it of my only daughter. Credit for that goes to Ma anyway, not to me. I’m built on the general lines of a space tug.
I put back the coin box of the Rocket-Race and looked up. “Ma—” I started to say. Then the door of the pilot’s compartment opened and John Lane stood there. Ellen, across the table from Ma, put down her book and looked up too. She was all eyes and they were shining.
Johnny saluted smartly, the regulation salute which a private ship pilot is supposed to give the owner and captain of the ship. It always got under my skin, that salute, but I couldn’t talk him out of it because the rules said he should do it.
He said, “Object ahead, Captain Wherry.”
“Object?” I queried. “What kind of object?”
You see, from Johnny’s voice and Johnny’s face you couldn’t guess whether it meant anything or not. Mars City Polytech trains ‘em to be strictly deadpan and Johnny had graduated magna cum laude. He’s a nice kid but he’d announce the end of the world in the same tone of voice he’d use to announce dinner, if it was a pilot’s job to announce dinner.
“It seems to be a planet, sir,” was all he said.
It took quite awhile for his words to sink in.
“A planet?” I asked, not particularly brilliantly. I
stared at him, hoping that he’d been drinking or something. Not because I had any objections to his seeing a planet sober but because if Johnny ever unbent to the stage of taking a few drinks, the alky would probably dissolve some of the starch out of his backbone. Then I’d have someone to swap stories with. It gets lonesome traveling through space with only two women and a Polytech grad who follows all the rules.
“A planet, sir. An object of planetary dimensions, I should say. Diameter about three thousand miles, distance two million, course apparently an orbit about the star Sirius A.”
“Johnny,” I said, “we’re inside the orbit of Thor, which is Sirius I, which means it’s the first planet of Sirius, and how can there be a planet inside of that? You wouldn’t be kidding me, Johnny?”
“You may inspect the viewplate, sir, and check my calculations,” he replied stiffly.
I got up and went into the pilot’s compartment. There was a disk in the center of the forward viewplate, all right. Checking his calculations was something else again. My mathematics end at checking coins out of coin machines. But I was willing to take his word for the calculations. “Johnny,” I almost shouted, “we’ve discovered a new planet! Ain’t that something?”
“Yes, sir,” he commented, in his usual matter-of-fact voice.
It was something, but not too much. I mean, the Sirius system hasn’t been colonized long and it wasn’t too surprising that a little three-thousand-mile planet hadn’t been noticed yet. Especially as (although this wasn’t known then) its orbit is very eccentric.
There hadn’t been room for Ma and Ellen to follow us into the pilot’s compartment, but they stood looking in, and I moved to one side so they could see the disk in the viewplate.
“How soon do we get there, Johnny?” Ma wanted to know.
“Our point of nearest approach on this course will be within two hours, Mrs. Wherry,” he replied. “We come within half a million miles of it.”
“Oh, do we?” I wanted to know.
“Unless, sir, you think it advisable to change course and give it more clearance.”
I gave clearance to my throat instead and looked at Ma and Ellen and saw that it would be okay by them. “Johnny,” I said, “we’re going to give it less clearance. I’ve always hankered to see a new planet untouched by human hands. We’re going to land there, even if we can’t leave the ship without oxygen masks.”
He said, “Yes, sir,” and saluted, but I thought there was a bit of disapproval in his eyes. Oh, if there had been, there was cause for it. You never know what you’ll run into busting into virgin territory out here. A cargo of canvas and slot machines isn’t the proper equipment for exploring, is it?
But the Perfect Pilot never questions an owner’s orders, dog-gone him! Johnny sat down and started punching keys on the calculator and we eased out to let him do it.
“Ma,” I said, “I’m a blamed fool.”
“You would be if you weren’t,” she came back. I grinned when I got that sorted out, and looked at Ellen.
But she wasn’t looking at me. She had that dreamy look in her eyes again. It made me want to go into the pilot’s compartment and take a poke at Johnny to see if it would wake him up. “Listen, honey,” I said, “that Johnny—”
But something burned the side of my face and I knew it was Ma looking at me, so I shut up. I got out a deck of cards and played solitaire until we landed.
Johnny popped out of the pilot’s compartment and saluted. “Landed, sir,” he said. “Atmosphere one-oh-sixteen on the gauge.”
“And what,” Ellen asked, “does that mean in English?”
“It’s breathable, Miss Wherry. A bit high in nitrogen and low in oxygen compared to Earth air, but nevertheless definitely breathable.”
He was a caution, that young man was, when it came to being precise.
“Then what are we waiting for?” I wanted to know. “Your orders, sir.”
“Shucks with my orders, Johnny. Let’s get the door open and get going.”
We got the door open. Johnny stepped outside first, strapping on a pair of heatojectors as he went. The rest of us were right behind him.
It was cool outside, but not cold. The landscape looked just like Thor, with bare rolling hills of hard-baked greenish clay. There was plant life, a brownish bushy stuff that looked a little like tumbleweed.
I took a look up to gauge the time and Sirius was almost at zenith, which meant Johnny had landed us smack in the middle of the day side. “Got any idea, Johnny,” I asked, “what the period of rotation is?”
“I had time only for a rough check, sir. It came out twenty-one hours and seventeen minutes.”
Rough check, he had said.
Ma said, “That’s rough enough for us. Gives us a full afternoon for a walk, and what are we waiting for?”
“For the ceremony, Ma,” I told her. “We got to name the place don’t we? And where did you put that bottle of champagne we were saving for my birthday? I reckon this is a more important occasion than that is.”
She told me where, and I went and got it and some glasses. “Got any suggestions for a name, Johnny? You saw it first.”
“No, sir.”
I said, “Trouble is that Thor and Freda are named wrong now. I mean, Thor is Sirius I and Freda is Sirius II, and since this orbit is inside theirs, they ought to be II and III respectively. Or else this ought to be Sirius O. Which means it’s Nothing Sirius.”
Ellen smiled and I think Johnny would have except that it would have been undignified.
But Ma frowned. “William—” she said, and would have gone on in that vein if something hadn’t happened.
Something looked over the top of the nearest hill. Ma was the only one facing that way and she let out a whoop and grabbed me. Then we all turned and looked.
It was the head of something that looked like an ostrich, only it must have been bigger than an elephant. Also there was a collar and a blue polka-dot bow tie around the thin neck of the critter, and it wore a hat. The hat was bright yellow and had a long purple feather. The thing looked at us a minute, winked quizzically, and then pulled its head back.
None of us said anything for a minute and then I took a deep breath. “That,” I said, “tears it, right down the middle. Planet, I dub thee Nothing Sirius.”
I bent down and hit the neck of the champagne bottle against the clay and it just dented the clay and wouldn’t break. I looked around for a rock to hit it on. There wasn’t any rock.
I took out a corkscrew from my pocket and opened the bottle instead. We all had a drink except Johnny, who took only a token sip because he doesn’t drink or smoke. Me, I had a good long one. Then I poured a brief libation on the ground and recorked the bottle; I had a hunch that I might need it more than the planet did. There was lots of whiskey in the ship and some Martian green-brew but no more champagne. I said, “Well, here we go.”
I caught Johnny’s eye and he said, “Do you think it wise, in view of the fact that there are—uh—inhabitants?”
“Inhabitants?” I said. “Johnny, whatever that thing that stuck its head over the hill was, it wasn’t an inhabitant. And if it pops up again, I’ll conk it over the head with this bottle.”
But just the same, before we started out, I went inside the Chitterling and got a couple more heatojectors. I stuck one in my belt and gave Ellen the other; she’s a better shot than I am. Ma couldn’t hit the side of an administration building with a spraygun, so I didn’t give her one.
We started off, and sort of by mutual consent, we went the other direction from where we’d seen the whatever-it-was. The hills all looked alike for a while and as soon as we were over the first one, we were out of sight of the Chitterling. But I noticed Johnny studying a wrist-compass every couple of minutes, and I knew he’d know the way home.
Nothing happened for three hills and then Ma said, “Look,” and we looked.
About twenty yards to our left there was a purple bush. There was a buzzing sound coming from i
t. We went a little closer and saw that the buzzing came from a lot of things that were flying around the bush. They looked like birds until you looked a second time and then you saw that their wings weren’t moving. But they zoomed up and down and around just the same. I tried to look at their heads, but where the heads ought to be there was only a blur. A circular blur.
“They got propellers,” Ma said. “Like old-fashioned airplanes used to have.”
It did look that way.
I looked at Johnny and he looked at me and we started over toward the bush. But the birds, or whatever, flew away quick, the minute we started toward them. They skimmed off low to the ground and were out of sight in a minute.
We started off again, none of us saying anything, and Ellen came up and walked alongside me. We were just far enough ahead to be out of earshot, and she said, “Pop—”
And didn’t go on with it, so I answered, “What, kid?”
“Nothing,” she replied sorrowful-like. “Skip it.”
So of course I knew what she wanted to talk about, but I couldn’t think of anything to say except to cuss out Mars Polytech and that wouldn’t have done any good. Mars Polytech is just too good for its own good and so are its ramrods or graduates. After a dozen years or so outside, though, some of them manage to unbend and limber up.
But Johnny hadn’t been out that long, by ten years or so. The chance to pilot the Chitterling had been a break for him, of course, as his first job. A few years with us and he’d be qualified to skipper something bigger. He’d qualify a lot faster than if he’d had to start in as a minor officer on a bigger ship.
The only trouble was that he was too good-looking, and didn’t know it. He didn’t know anything they hadn’t taught him at Polytech and all they’d taught him was math and astrogation and how to salute, and they hadn’t taught him how not to.
“Ellen,” I started to say, “don’t—”
“Yes, Pop?”
“Uh—nothing. Skip it.” I hadn’t started to say that at all, but suddenly she grinned at me and I grinned back and it was just like we’d talked the whole thing over. True, we hadn’t got anywhere, but then we wouldn’t have got anywhere if we had, if you know what I mean.
My Best Science Fiction Story Page 10