Gathered around the air lock were two thirds of the Hopeful’s complement: Captain Standforth, Astrogator Stokes, Lieutenant Shelby and Chief Engineer Hestor Hanshaw, a stocky blunt woman with a stocky blunt manner, who was saying, “I didn’t like that thump. Bad for the engines.”
“I didn’t like it either,” Captain Standforth told her. “Made me cut myself.” He showed her the scratched finger.
Hester, the closest thing they had to a ship’s doctor, frowned at the scratch a millisecond, then said, “paint a little antirust compound on it. Be good as new.”
Bemused, the captain gazed at his finger. “Are you sure?”
Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster joined the group, and Billy armed the councilman with his microphone, “It’s all set, “ he said. “Just talk straight into it.”
“Fine.”
“Not yet,” Ensign Benson said.
The councilman stepped out onto the small platform suspended halfway up the side of the ship, and his amplified voice rolled out over a dusty landscape reminiscent of certain sections of Eastern Oklahoma in early June.
“Citizens of J. Railsford Farnsworth Repertory com---Ack!”
Inside the ship, Ensign Benson frowned. “Ack?”
Councilman Luthguster bundled hastily back into the ship like a stockbroker into the bar car. “Those aren’t people! They’re, they’re things!”
“Stop talking into the microphone,” Ensign Benson said.
Billy looked out the air lock. “Oh, Wow! Cute bug-eyed monsters!”
“What?” Stepping impatiently out onto the platform, Ensign Benson found himself gazing down on as motley a collection of creatures as ever was lit by the same sun. Nonhuman to a fault but, as Billy had said, cute. They were tiny round puffballs with human legs and wings and yellow wigs over fairy faces. Tall, androgynous sprites in tights. Hoppers with humps. And in front of them stood a beautiful womanoid with gauzy wings and a gauzy gown and long, pointed ears, and a big hairy manoid with a great purple cloak and long feet that curled up into spirals at the end.
Loudly enough for Ensign Benson to hear, the manoid addressed the womanoid: “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.”
In the doorway, the captain said, “That one over there looks like a bird, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Billy.
“What, jealous Oberon!” the woman was bellowing. “Fairies, skip hence: I have foresworn his bed and company.”
“I will not talk to things!”
“Tell that nitwit,” Ensign Benson said over his shoulder, “to stop talking into the microphone.”
Below, half the thingummies were skipping away, while the womanoid frowned up at Ensign Benson. “Fairies, skip hence,” she repeated, even more loudly. “That’s you, buster!”
Ensign Benson called, “Where are the human beings around here?”
“Nowhere in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” jealous Oberon told him, apparently exasperated.
“I will not talk to things!”
“All right,” disgusted Oberon said, “let’s go, troupe.” As his whatsits and flumadiddles obediently slopped off, he turned back to call, “And I suppose that spaceship of yours is an example of kitchen sink realism!”
The entire crowd shuffled away. They appeared to be removing wings and heads and appendages as they went, almost as though they were costumes; and 40 feet from the ship, they stepped around a curtain of air, one after the other, and disappeared.
Ensign Benson blinked. “Oh, boy,” he said.
The captain and Billy came out onto the platform, the captain saying,” Where did everybody go?”
“Um,” said Ensign Benson.
“Those were really keen creatures,” Billy said.
“And what a beautiful day, the captain said, gazing skyward, stepping back from the ship, the better to view the empyrean. “Is it morning here or after---Aak!”
“Another aak,” Ensign Benson moodily said, watching the captain tumble down the stairs to land in a dusty heap at the bottom.
“Kybee, look!” said Billy.
Ensign Benson followed Billy’s pointing finger. There in the middle of the field, an invisible curtain of air was lifting to reveal what seemed to be a house with its side wall torn away. In the kitchen, a woman wearing a slip stood wearily at her ironing board. In the living room, a man in a torn T-shirt sprawled on a sofa and drank beer.
Captain Standforth had picked himself up and was brushing himself off. Ensign Benson started down the ladder, intent on finding out what was going on here, and Billy came after. Above, Pam Stokes and Hester Hanshaw came tentatively out to the platform, Pam looking at the oddly sliced house and saying, “Did they miss a mortgage payment?”
Hester said, “Maybe all their weather comes from the other side.”
“Are the things still out there?”
“They’re gone, Councilman Luthguster,” Pam said. “You can come out.”
“Tell him to leave the microphone inside,” Ensign Benson called up the ladder, then said to the captain, “let’s go find out the story here.”
“I suppose we have to.”
The captain and the ensign and Billy crossed the dusty field, meeting part way a frazzled woman wearing many frilly-but-worn garments and carrying a carpetbag. Smiling rather maniacally at Billy and speaking with an almost impenetrable southern accent complicated by many odd little pauses, she said, “Ah have…allwuz depended…on the…kahndness of stranjuhs.”
“Me too,” said Billy.
“As for me,” said Ensign Benson, “I’ve never depended on the kindness of strangers. Seems to work better somehow.”
In the living room, the man burped and yelled, “Stella!”
The frazzled woman stopped, frowned at Ensign Benson and said, completely without accent or affectation,
“Say. What’s your story?”
“That’s what I meant to ask you,” Ensign Benson said. “What’s your story?”
“A Streetcar Named Desire, of course.”
Billy said, “What’s a streetcar?”
“I’ll tell you what my desire is,” Ensign Benson said, but the captain got there first, stepping forward to say, “Madam, if you please, take me to your leader.”
“Us,” said Ensign Benson
“Oh, that story,” said the woman.
Royal-blue carpet with the Presidential seal in the middle. Large wooden desk, flanked by flags. The Oval Office.
Coming around his desk, smiling, hand outstretched, the President of the United States greeted the people from Earth. “Welcome back. Your safe return from barren Aldebaran has ignited the spirit of mankind. Welcome home to Earth.”
“Actually, Mr. President,” Councilman Luthguster said, puffing himself up, “We’re from Earth, and we wish to---”
“Well, of course you are,” the President said. Picking up a document from his desk, he said, “I have a proclamation here in honor of your voyage and return. ‘Whereas, in the course of human events…’”
Through the window behind the desk, the Washington Monument could be seen; but through the open doorway to the left, the same old dusty plain was visible. A group of people in overalls and sweatbands wheeled a Trojan horse by. Two women in straw hats and tuxedos bucked and wung the other way.
The proclamation ran its course. At its finish, Councilman Luthguster squared his round shoulders and said, “Mr. President, I am empowered by the Galactic Council---”
Approaching Ensign Benson, the President firmly shook his hand and said, “Captain, your voyage into the unknown makes this the most important day in all creation.”
“Sir,” said Captain Standforth, “I’m the captain.”
“You,” the President reminded him, “are the captain’s best friend.” Turning to Pam Stokes, he said, “And you are the ship’s biologist.”
“Actually,” Pam said, “I’m the astrogator. I don’t think we’d need a biologist on a---”
“Of course y
ou do.” Irritation seeped through the Presidential manner. “How else do we discover the killer virus that’s taken over the crew’s bodies?”
“Wait a minute,” Ensign Benson said. “You aren’t the President: you’re pretending to be the President. This is a play!’
“Well, of course it is!” the President cried! “And this is the worst rehearsal I have ever participated in!”
Luthguster harrumphed. “Do you mean to say,” he demanded, “that you are not empowered to deal on a primary level with a plenipotentiary from Earth?”
Frowning, the president said, “ Have you come unglued, fella?”
Ensign Benson muttered, “Director-no. Producer-no.” Snapping his fingers, he said to the President, “Take me to your stage manager.”
The man sat atop a six foot wooden ladder. Behind him were three rows of kitchen chairs, several occupied by solemn-faced people wearing their Sunday best. The man on the ladder said, “I’m the stage manager here. I guess I know just about everything there is to know about our town….”
The captain and the crew sat by the side of the dusty road. Billy took his boot off and looked in it. Councilman Luthguster, marching back and forth, announced, “This is absurd! These people can’t spend all their time play acting. They must have a government, an infrastructure. How do they get their food?”
“Of Mice and Men for an extended run,” suggested Ensign Benson.
Across the way, out in the middle of an empty field, a group of men in togas strolled out from behind an invisible curtain of air and began declaiming at one another. They all stood with one foot in front of the other.
“That’s the part that bugs me the most,” Ensign Benson said. “How do they appear and disappear like that?”
“Scrim,” said Hester.
Ensign Benson gave her an unfriendly look. “What?”
“I know what a scrim is,” Billy said. “We had one in the theater in college. It’s a big mesh screen. You paint a backdrop on it and hang it across the front of the stage. If you shine a light in front, you see the painting but you can’t see the stage. If you shine the light in the back, the painting disappears and you see the stage,.”
“Close but no psuegar,” said Hester. “That’s the original, old-fashioned kind of scrim, but then a way was found to alter air molecules so light would bend around them. Now a scrim is a curtain of bent molecules. You put it around a set and it shows you what’s beyond it. They used to use one in the field questions for the S.E. degree, but of course its old-fashioned now.”
“None of which solves,” Councilman Luthguster reminded them, “the problem of how to get in touch with whoever runs this blasted colony. I’ll do no more play acting!”
Standing, the captain said, “Well, Hestia’s going down; there’s no more to do today. We’ll get an early start tomorrow.
“Wasn’t it right here?” the captain asked.
“I thought,” said Pam vaguely, “it was more over that way, by those little trees.”
“There weren’t trees here before,” Ensign Benson said. “Those are cardboard, part of a set.”
“I am uninterested in sets, “the councilman said. “Totally uninterested. What I want is my room on the ship.”
“Well, yes,” said Luthguster.
The little group stood on the plain, looking around. The captain said, “It was just--- It was right around --- I know it was over here somewhere.”
A man dressed in the front half of a horse costume came striding purposefully by, carrying the horse’s head under his arm. Billy said, “Excuse me. Have you seen our spaceship?”
“What?” The horseman looked around, then said, “Oh, right. They struck that set.” And he walked on.
“Struck?’ Echoed the captain. “Struck?”
“Theatrical term,” Pam told him. “It means to dismantle a set and take it off the stage.”
“You can’t dismantle a spaceship, “ the captain said. “Not in half an hour.”
“No,” Ensign Benson said, through clenched jaws. Smoke seemed to be coming out of his ears. “But you can put a curtain around it.” Glaring at Hester as though it were her fault, he said, “Our ship is surrounded by your goddamn bent molecules!”
Darkness fell, a bit at a time. “I think,” said the captain inaccurately, “I think we’ll just have to sleep on the ground.”
“Like camping out!” said the irrepressible Billy.
“Without the camp,” said the repressible councilman.
The captain said, “We’ll each have to find a declivity to sleep in.”
“Amen,” said the councilman.
“Kybee,” Pam said, “This is my declivity.”
“It’s important to retain our body heat,” Ensign Benson explained, trying to hunker down beside her.
“Thank you, Kybee,” Pam said, “But I’m really quite warm enough sleeping by myself.”
“You would be,” Ensign Benson muttered, thumping off across the darkling plain and all at once running into a spider web. “Ptchah!” he cried, flailing at the web, then realized it wasn’t a web at all. It was a, it was some sort of, it felt like a thin sheet or a ---
Curtain.
“Oh, boy,” Ensign Benson said. Feeling the material with both hands, maintaining a lot of body contact with this drapery, he sidled along to the right, noticing how clothlike it was, giving when he pressed but resisting when he pressed too hard. Somewhere there would be, there had to be, an opening.
There. His right hand slipped off the curtain’s edge and fell forward against unresisting air, and all at once, instead of Hestia’s dull but protracted set, he was looking at somebody’s drawing room.
Comedy-of-manners time. A sofa centered, telephone on stand to its left. Several upstage doors for slamming. Occasional furniture along the walls. Steady, not-too-bright light, source uncertain.
Ensign Benson stepped through the break and inspected more closely. Windows fakes with painted views. Bookcase a painted façade. Telephone nonoperative. Water in ashtray, soap on mirror. Some sort of mottled obscurity high above blocking the sky. Sofa real and soft.
Turning about, he looked through the curtain of bent molecules at his shipmates settling down for the night on the duty ground, like a small herd from some endangered species. Tell Pam about the sofa? Surely she wouldn’t mind sharing it. On the other hand, there was the rest of the crew.
Ensign Benson sighed. Pushing open the flap, he called, “Everybody! I found us a room.”
Hestia rose like thunder out of the horizon across the way. “I hear thunder,” Pam said, sitting up on the sofa, squinting in the rosy light, looking tousled and adorable and unavailable.
The other earthlings, less adorable, rose from their beds of chair curtains and window draperies. “Rain,” grumbled Ensign Benson, stretching his stiff, sore back. “Just to make things perfect.”
But there was no rain, and when the thunder stopped, it became obvious that the sound had actually been some sort of approaching motor. For a few seconds the earthlings waited in silence, contemplating their morning mouths, and then an upstage door opened and a heedless young couple in evening dress-black tie for him, green flapper outfit for her---entered and slammed the door. “Tennis, anyone?” cried the boy, with a toothy grin; then, as he reacted to the scene onstage, his grin became a toothless O of shock. “Lor!” he breathed.
The girl stared about in disbelief. “Well, I never!” she said, in character.
Captain Standforth clambered stiffly from his settee, saying, “I’m terribly sorry. Is this your place?”
The young man stared about in well-bred horror. “Look what you’ve done,” he said, “to this set.”
“We’ll fix it right up,” Billy promised, fluffing the pillow that had been his sole companion on the floor.
“I’ve a good mind,” the young man said angrily, “to report you to, report you….”
Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster both leaned eagerly toward him. “Yes?�
� asked the councilman. “Yes?”
“To the agency!”
“Of course!” cried Ensign Benson.
The vehicle was a four-wheeled land traveler with a simple metal-pipe frame and three rows of bucket seats. While the Earthfolk piled atop another in the back---Pam deflecting Ensign Benson’s attempt to pile atop her-the annoyed thespians sat in front, the male kicking the engine to life and hunching over the handle bars. “We’ll see about this” he said, and off they lurched.
Up a dusty slope they went and over the ridge and down the long, dusty road toward the settlement, a cluster of small buildings along an X of two streets.
“That’s the colony,” said Ensign Benson, staring around Hester’s shoulder.
“Where we landed was nothing but an outdoor---”
“Rehearsal hall,” said Billy.
“They figured,” Ensign Benson said, “we were just actors, rehearsing a---”
“Space opera,” said Billy.
“Shut up, Billy” said Ensign Benson.
Meanwhile, up front, the girl was pleading her case to her companion. “They’re just trying to attract attention,” she said. “Come on, Harv, you and I aren’t above stunts like that ourselves to get a part. They’re just between gigs, that’s all.”
“Then let ‘em go to Temp, like the rest of us.”
“Come on, Harv, don’t be a producer.”
By then they were in the middle of the most utilitarian town the Earthpeople had ever seen. The buildings were drabbly functional and lacking in ornamentation, with none more than two stories high. Other stripped-down land travelers moved back and forth, and the several pedestrians, male and female, were mostly dressed in plain, drab jump suits. The few people in costume-a cowboy, a striped-pants diplomat, a belly dancer-stood out like parakeets in a field of crows.
Collected Stories Page 30