The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 20 Classic Science Fiction Tales

by Frank Belknap Long

  But where there was no grief there could be no sobbing …

  One thing only she did before she left. She unloosed the collar of the unmoving form on the floor and looked for the small brown mole she did not really expect to find. The mole she knew to be on her husband’s shoulder, high up on the left side.

  She had noticed things that made her doubt her sanity; she needed to see the little black mole to reassure her …

  She had noticed the difference in the hair-line, the strange slant of the eyebrows, the crinkly texture of the skin where it should have been smooth …

  Something was wrong…horribly, weirdly wrong …

  Even the hands of the sprawled form seemed larger and hairier than the hands of her husband. Nevertheless it was important to be sure …

  The absence of the mole clinched it.

  Sally crouched beside the body, carefully readjusting the collar. Then she got up and walked out of the office.

  Some homecomings are joyful, others cruel. Sitting in the taxi, clenching and unclenching her hands, Sally had no plan that could be called a plan, no hope that was more than a dim flickering in a vast wasteland, bleak and unexplored.

  But it was strange how one light burning brightly in a cottage window could make even a wasteland seem small, could shrink and diminish it until it became no more than a patch of darkness that anyone with courage might cross.

  The light was in Tommy’s room and there was a whispering behind the door. Sally could hear the whispering as she tiptoed upstairs, could see the light streaming out into the hall.

  She paused for an instant at the head of the stairs, listening. There were two voices in the room, and they were talking back and forth.

  Sally tiptoed down the hall, stood with wildly beating heart just outside the door.

  “She knows now, Tommy,” the deepest of the two voices said. “We are very close, your mother and I. She knows now that I sent her to the office to find my ‘stand in.’ Oh, it’s an amusing term, Tommy—an Earth term we’d hardly use on Mars. But it’s a term your mother would understand.”

  A pause, then the voice went on, “You see, my son, it has taken me eight years to repair the ship. And in eight years a man can wither up and die by inches if he does not have a growing son to go adventuring with him in the end.”

  “Adventuring, father?”

  “You have read a good many Earth books, my son, written especially for boys. Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. What paltry books they are! But in them there is a little of the fire, a little of the glow of our world.”

  “No, father. I started them but I threw them away for I did not like them.”

  “As you and I must throw away all Earth things, my son. I tried to be kind to your mother, to be a good husband as husbands go on Earth. But how could I feel proud and strong and reckless by her side? How could I share her paltry joys and sorrows, chirp with delight as a sparrow might chirp hopping about in the grass? Can an eagle pretend to be a sparrow? Can the thunder muffle its voice when two white-crested clouds collide in the shining depths of the night sky?”

  “You tried, father. You did your best.”

  “Yes, my son, I did try. But if I had attempted to feign emotions I did not feel your mother would have seen through the pretense. She would then have turned from me completely. Without her I could not have had you, my son.”

  “And now, father, what will we do?”

  “Now the ship has been repaired and is waiting for us. Every day for eight years I went to the hill and worked on the ship. It was badly wrecked, my son, but now my patience has been rewarded, and every damaged astronavigation instrument has been replaced.”

  “You never went to the office, father? You never went at all?”

  “No, my son. My stand-in worked at the office in my place. I instilled in your mother’s mind an intense dislike and fear of the office to keep her from ever coming face to face with the stand-in. She might have noticed the difference. But I had to have a stand-in, as a safeguard. Your mother might have gone to the office despite the mental block.”

  “She’s gone now, father. Why did you send for her?”

  “To avoid what she would call a scene, my son. That I could not endure. I had the stand-in summon her on the office telephone, then I withdrew all vitality from it. She will find it quite lifeless. But it does not matter now. When she returns we will be gone.”

  “Was constructing the stand-in difficult, father?”

  “Not for me, my son. On Mars we have many androids, each constructed to perform a specific task. Some are ingenious beyond belief—or would seem so to Earthmen.”

  There was a pause, then the weaker of the two voices said, “I will miss my mother. She tried to make me happy. She tried very hard.”

  “You must be brave and strong, my son. We are eagles, you and I. Your mother is a sparrow, gentle and dun-colored. I shall always remember her with tenderness. You want to go with me, don’t you?”

  “Yes, father. Oh, yes!”

  “Then come, my son. We must hurry. Your mother will be returning any minute now.”

  Sally stood motionless, listening to the voices like a spectator sitting before a television screen. A spectator can see as well as hear, and Sally could visualize her son’s pale, eager face so clearly there was no need for her to move forward into the room.

  She could not move. And nothing on Earth could have wrenched a tortured cry from her. Grief and shock may paralyze the mind and will, but Sally’s will was not paralyzed.

  It was as if the thread of her life had been cut, with only one light left burning. Tommy was that light. He would never change. He would go from her forever. But he would always be her son.

  The door of Tommy’s room opened and Tommy and his father came out into the hall. Sally stepped back into shadows and watched them walk quickly down the hall to the stairs, their voices low, hushed. She heard them descend the stairs, their footsteps dwindle, die away into silence …

  You’ll see a light, Sally, a great glow lighting up the sky. The ship must be very beautiful. For eight years he labored over it, restoring it with all the shining gifts of skill and feeling at his command. He was calm toward you, but not toward the ship, Sally—the ship which will take him back to Mars!

  How is it on Mars, she wondered. My son, Tommy, will become a strong, proud adventurer daring the farthest planet of the farthest star?

  You can’t stop a boy from adventuring. Surprise him at his books and you’ll see tropical seas in his eyes, a pearly nautilus, Hong Kong and Valparaiso resplendent in the dawn.

  There is no strength quite like the strength of a mother, Sally. Endure it, be brave …

  Sally was at the window when it came. A dazzling burst of radiance, starting from the horizon’s rim and spreading across the entire sky. It lit up the cottage and flickered over the lawn, turning rooftops to molten gold and gilding the long line of rolling hills which hemmed in the town.

  Brighter it grew and brighter, gilding for a moment even Sally’s bowed head and her image mirrored on the pane. Then, abruptly, it was gone …

  MAN OF DISTINCTION

  Originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, November 1954.

  “Do you believe the stories?” he asked.

  I stared at him. “What stories?”

  “Oh, you know what stories. People claiming they’ve been to Mars. People claiming the Government has built a rocket ship and is keeping it quiet. Top priority stuff—classified.”

  “Utter nonsense,” I told him. “How about another beer?”

  “Another beer would be fine. You know, it is kind of funny. You sit down at a table and you see a stranger standing at the bar with a faraway look in his eyes. Without really seeming to see you he comes over, and s
tarts talking to you.”

  I looked him straight in the eye. “Like I did, for instance.”

  “All right—like you did.”

  “So you think I’ve been to Mars.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you’ve been thinking it. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  He screwed up his eyes, studying me cautiously. He was looking at a gray-templed man in his late forties wearing a pin-striped gray suit unobtrusively blending with a prep stripe tie, and argyle anklets. I wouldn’t have said he was seeing a man of distinction straight out of the whiskey ads. But there was nothing to stop me from thinking it.

  I was seeing a quite different sort of human being—a ruddy-cheeked, perpetually fidgety little table-sitter with high blood pressure tensions threatening his very existence. Dark of brow and bright of eye—an eager beaver if ever there was one.

  “Try relaxing,” I whispered.

  “What’s that?”

  “I guess you didn’t hear me. I said I’d like to know you better. If you’d just answer a few questions—”

  “All right. Ask them.”

  “If you went to Mars, if you actually had a chance to be on the first rocket ship, would you go humbly or proudly?”

  “Hell, proudly. I’d have a right to feel proud.”

  “Good. If you met a Martian you wouldn’t take any nonsense from him. Correct?”

  “Correct. No nonsense at all. Let’s have another beer.”

  “You’d treat him rough if he got in your way. You’d pin his ears back, show him the error of his ways. Only a man has the sacred right to get skizzled and swagger a bit, woo a blonde, and lay down the law to lesser breeds without the law. Correct?”

  “I’d never deny it. You’re quoting Kipling, aren’t you?”

  “Correct. You are obviously a man of literary discernment. Let’s take it from there. Suppose you were actually standing on the rust-red sands of Mars. The sun is beating down unmercifully, and the heat is so intense it makes your eyeballs crawl. I’m quoting Kipling again.”

  “Go right ahead. I’m listening.”

  “Say, there’s nothing wrong with this beer! Well, you’re standing there with your throat so parched you can hardly swallow and your eyes are burning holes in your face. You’d give anything for a drink of cool, sparkling water.

  “You’re miles from the rocket ship, understand? You’ve gone exploring, and it’s hard to judge distances on Mars because the glimmer is so frightful and the miles so deceptive. You see mirages in the sky.”

  “You do, eh? What kind of mirages?”

  “The worst kind. Visualize a mirage in Technicolor in the most realistic kind of cinemascopic Western.”

  “Like in Shane?”

  “Shane wasn’t in cinemascope, and there were no mirages in it. But yes…you get what I mean. Take that kind of mirage, and add to it. Visualize a crater lake of crystal clear water, gleaming entrancingly under the cloudless Martian sky. The water comes down from the poles in the bright springtime of the year, through an intricate network of canals. It collects in crater lakes, and when you see a mirage there’s beauty in it and wonder and strangeness and glory.”

  “You said it was the worst kind of mirage.”

  “What is worse than a glimpse of an illusionary paradise? You can establish the most destructive kind of Freudian complex in a child by holding out to it a promise of bliss labeled: For adults only. A Martian mirage is for adults only, and the first Earthmen on Mars will hardly be adults by any yardstick you may care to measure them with.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “When an adult is dying with thirst, and realizes that he has only himself to blame he doesn’t fall down and grovel in the sand like a tormented animal when he sees a mirage in the sky.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He faces up to it like a man. He keeps right on walking, refusing to even look at the mirage. When he can’t stand it any longer he’ll rip off his oxygen mask and put a quick end to his torment.”

  “And this man you’re talking about—he didn’t do that?”

  “No, he didn’t. He went down on his hands and knees on the sand, and groveled. He cursed and groaned and cried like a baby. He kept rubbing his eyes, staring up at the mirage as if pleading with it not to go away. As if it could help him, as if the shining bright water wasn’t just an optical phenomenon produced by a stratum of hot air mirroring the inverted reflection of an incredibly distant crater lake.

  “He wasn’t an adult, and he could actually feel the coolness of the water against his parched flesh. He clung to the illusion as he might have clung to a rubber nipple on an infant-feeding bottle. He made a hideous spectacle of himself. Did you ever see a grown man babble and mew like that plucking infant in Shakespeare? You remember the passage. ‘Puking and mewing in its nurse’s arms.’”

  “I do—and it always seemed a little revolting to me. I’ve seen drunks carry on that way, though. What do you say to another beer?”

  “Okay, if I can catch the waiter’s eye. Meanwhile, suppose you let me finish. This poor fool was down on his hands and knees, thinking the jig was up for him with a vengeance. He hadn’t given a thought to the possibility there might actually be life on Mars. The rocket ship had landed in a wilderness of blowing sand and for three days sand was just about the only thing that really threatened his sanity.

  “A hundred years ago Thoreau walked the length and breadth of Cape Cod. He wrote a book about it all filled with sand—bright and continuously blowing sand by the glorious deep blue sea. But the man I’m talking about wasn’t a poet. He didn’t want to write a book about Mars. He just wanted to stay alive. He felt all hollow inside like a drum, with sand grains whistling through him and turning him into the kind of musical instrument you visualize when you think of the Danse Macabre.”

  “You were saying something about life on Mars.”

  “You’re right—so I was. He couldn’t believe there could be any life on Mars. A few low-grade lichens might have managed to survive on a world so bleak and inhospitable. But a man dying of thirst does not go in for biological hair-splitting. He was in agony, understand—at the end of his tether.”

  “Here comes the waiter. Hey, waiter! Over here. Two more beers.”

  “Just a minute, please. Make mine a whiskey-and-soda. Beer for this gentleman.”

  “You were saying?” came from a wet whistle, the instant the drinks had been set before us, and I was in a position to go on.

  “I was saying it was tragic, horrible, pitiful, ugly. He was down on the sand, expecting that every breath he drew would be his last. Thirst is far worse than hunger. If you’ve ever experienced it you won’t doubt that for an instant.”

  “I don’t doubt it. You make it seem hideously real.”

  “It was real, believe me. The man was close to death. The fact that he was a coward, and mentally immature had nothing to do with the situation itself—the starkly desperate plight in which he found himself. Without water he could not have survived another hour.”

  “Did he find water? Did he manage to save himself? You make it so real I can almost see him, tugging at his throat, dragging himself along.”

  “This whiskey has the right kind of smoky flavor. Heaven protect me from some of the Scotch you get nowadays.”

  I tapped my glass for emphasis and tried to sound casual. “No, he didn’t find water,” I said.

  “He died then—there in the desert? God, man, don’t keep staring at me like that. What’s wrong, what’s the matter with you? Just who are you, anyway? How can you make it sound so real?”

  “The truth always sounds real,” I said. “Even to reluctant and unwilling ears.”

  “Stop being literary. It isn’t funny anymore.”
r />   “I’m not trying to be funny. I’ll tell you exactly what happened. He didn’t find water, but water was brought to him. Out of the sun-reddened sand blanket, out of the throat-parching mist, and the hollow-drum rattlings came a Martian walking upright, with a water jug jogging at his waist.

  “He was a lowly Martian, a desert outcast. He was weary unto death and he still had a desert to cross. Perhaps the water in the jug wouldn’t have held out until he reached his home village. He might even have perished with thirst notwithstanding. But with the water he had a fighting chance to survive.

  “Let me describe him. His high bulging forehead was pale green and veined like an oak leaf. His ink-black eyes were completely pupil-less, and his nose so sharp and narrow that it divided his features in a repellently unnatural way. If you hurled a knife at a man and it came out through the front of his face you’d have the groundwork for a mind’s eye visualization of the Martian countenance.”

  “Why are you telling me all this? What happened when he saw the man?”

  “He squatted down on the sand and he gave the man half his water to drink. Remember Kipling? ‘Squatting on the coals, giving drink to poor damned souls.’ Kipling’s immortal water boy simply risked his life under fire. A bullet finished him, but he had a fair chance to survive. The Martian had really no chance at all. By letting the man on the sand half empty the jug he was making his own death certain.

  “He was making his own death certain—but he was a good guy. A terribly good guy. He was human too. By keeping half the water he could pretend to himself that he did have a chance. He didn’t want to appear noble in his own eyes, and the flesh being weak—whether it be flesh of man or Martian—having a little water left gave him a certain comfort. He was a terribly good, human guy, believe me.”

  “What happened? If I was in that man’s shoes I wouldn’t have cared much whether he was good or bad—not right at that moment. I’d have grabbed that water jug and—”