Allenby pointed at the third orbit and thumped his chest. The chief squeaked and thumped his own chest and pointed at the copperish band around his head. Then he pointed at Allenby.
“I seem to have conveyed to him,” Allenby said dryly, “the fact that I’m chief of our party. Well, let’s try again.”
He started over on the orbits. He didn’t seem to be getting anyplace, so the rest of us watched the Martians instead. A last handful was straggling across the wide street.
“Curious,” said Gonzales. “Note what happens when they reach the center of the street.”
Each Martian, upon reaching the center of the street, glanced at his feet—just for a moment—without even breaking stride. And then came on.
“What can they be looking at?” Gonzales wondered.
“The chief did it too,” Burton mused. “Remember when he first came toward us?”
We all stared intently at the middle of the street. We saw absolutely nothing but sand.
The Martians milled around us and watched Allenby and his orbits. A Martian child appeared from between two buildings across the street. On six-inch legs, it started across, got halfway, glanced downward—and came on.
“I don’t get it,” Burton said. “What in hell are they looking at?”
The child reached the crowd and squeaked a thin, high note.
A number of things happened at once.
Several members of the group around us glanced down, and along the edge of the crowd nearest the center of the street there was a mild stir as individuals drifted off to either side. Quite casually—nothing at all urgent about it. They just moved concertedly to get farther away from the center of the street, not taking their interested gaze off us for one second in the process.
Even the chief glanced up from Allenby’s concentric circles at the child’s squeak. And Randolph, who had been fidgeting uncomfortably and paying very little attention to our conversation, decided that he must answer Nature’s call. He moved off into the dunes surrounding the village. Or rather, he started to move.
The moment he set off across the wide street, the little Martian chief was in front of him, brown eyes wide, hands out before him as if to thrust Randolph back.
Again six safeties clicked. The Martians didn’t even blink at the sudden appearance of our guns. Probably the only weapon they recognized was a club, or maybe a rock.
“What can the matter be?” Randolph said.
He took another step forward. The chief squeaked and stood his ground. Randolph had to stop or bump into him. Randolph stopped.
The chief squeaked, looking right into the bore of Randolph’s gun.
“Hold still,” Allenby told Randolph, “till we know what’s up.”
Allenby made an interrogative sound at the chief. The chief squeaked and pointed at the ground. We looked. He was pointing at his shadow.
Randolph stirred uncomfortably.
“Hold still,” Allenby warned him, and again he made the questioning sound.
The chief pointed up the street. Then he pointed down the street. He bent to touch his shadow, thumping it with thin fingers. Then he pointed at the wall of a house nearby.
We all looked.
Straight lines had been painted on the curved brick-colored wall, up and down and across, to form many small squares about four inches across. In each square was a bit of squiggly writing, in blackish paint, and a small wooden peg jutting out from the wall.
Burton said, “Looks like a damn crossword puzzle.”
“Look,” said Janus. “In the lower right corner—a metal ring hanging from one of the pegs.”
And that was all we saw on the wall. Hundreds of squares with figures in them—a small peg set in each— and a ring hanging on one of the pegs.
“You know what?” Allenby said slowly. “I think it’s a calendar! Just a second—thirty squares wide by twenty-two high—that’s six hundred and sixty. And that bottom line has twenty six—twenty-seven squares. Six hundred and eighty-seven squares in all. That’s how many days there are in the Martian year!”
He looked thoughtfully at the metal ring. “I’ll bet that ring is hanging from the peg in the square that represents today. They must move it along every day, to keep track. . .”
“What’s a calendar got to do with my crossing the street?” Randolph asked in a pained tone.
He started to take another step. The chief squeaked as if it were a matter of desperate concern that he make us understand. Randolph stopped again and swore. Allenby made his questioning sound again.
The chief pointed emphatically at his shadow, then at the communal calendar—and we could see now that he was pointing at the metal ring.
Burton said slowly, “I think he’s trying to tell us that this is today. And such-and-such a time of day. I bet he’s using his shadow as a sundial.”
“Perhaps,” Allenby granted.
Randolph said, “If this monkey doesn’t let me go in another minute—”
The chief squeaked, eyes concerned.
“Stand still,” Allenby ordered. “He’s trying to warn you of some danger.”
The chief pointed down the street again and, instead of squealing, revealed that there was another sound at his command. He said, “Whooooooosh!”
We all stared at the end of the street.
Nothing! Just the wide avenue between the houses, and the high sand dune down at the end of it, from which we had first looked upon the village.
The chief described a large circle with one hand, sweeping the hand above his head, down to his knees, up again, as fast as he could. He pursed his monkey-lips and said, “Whooooooosh!” And made the circle again.
A Martian emerged from the door in the side of a house across the avenue and blinked at the Sun, as if he had just awakened. Then he saw what was going on below and blinked again, this time in interest. He made his way down around the winding ramp and started to cross the street.
About halfway, he paused, eyed the calendar on the house wall, glanced at his shadow. Then he got down on his hands and knees and crawled, across the middle of the street. Once past the middle, he rose, walked the rest of the way to join one of the groups and calmly stared at us along with the rest of them.
“They’re all crazy,” Randolph said disgustedly. “I’m going to cross that street!”
“Shut up. So it’s a certain time of a certain day,” Allenby mused. “And from the way the chief is acting, he’s afraid for you to cross the street. And that other one just crawled. By God, do you know what this might tie in with?”
We were silent for a moment. Then Gonzales said, “Of course!”
And Burton said, “The holes!”
“Exactly,” said Allenby. “Maybe whatever made— or makes—the holes comes right down the center of the street here. Maybe that’s why they built the village this way—to make room for—”
“For what?” Randolph asked unhappily, shifting his feet.
“I don’t know,” Allenby said. He looked thoughtfully at the chief. “That circular motion he made— could he have been describing something that went around and around the planet? Something like—oh, no!” Allenby’s eyes glazed. “I wouldn’t believe it in a million years.”
His gaze went to the far end of the street, to the high sand dune that rose there. The chief seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
“I’m going to crawl,” Randolph stated. He got to his hands and knees and began to creep across the center of the avenue.
The chief let him go.
The sand dune at the end of the street suddenly erupted. A forty-foot spout of dust shot straight out from the sloping side, as if a bullet had emerged. Powdered sand hazed the air, yellowed it almost the full length of the avenue. Grains of sand stung the skin and rattled minutely on the houses.
WhoooSSSHHHHH!
Randolph dropped flat on his belly. He didn’t have to continue his trip. He had made other arrangements.
That night in the shi
p, while we all sat around, still shaking our heads every once in a while, Allenby talked with Earth. He sat there, wearing the headphones, trying to make himself understood above the godawful static.
“... an exceedingly small body,” he repeated wearily to his unbelieving audience, “about four inches in diameter. It travels at a mean distance of four feet above the surface of the planet, at a velocity yet to be calculated. Its unique nature results in many hitherto unobserved—I might say even unimagined—phenomena.” He stared blankly in front of him for a moment, then delivered the understatement of his life. “The discovery may necessitate a re-examination of many of our basic postulates in the physical sciences.”
The headphones squawked.
Patiently, Allenby assured Earth that he was entirely serious, and reiterated the results of his observations. I suppose that he, an astronomer, was twice as flabbergasted as the rest of us. On the other hand, perhaps he was better equipped to adjust to the evidence.
“Evidently,” he said, “when the body was formed, it traveled at such fantastic velocity as to enable it to—” his voice was almost a whisper—“to punch holes in things.”
The headphones squawked.
“In rocks, Allenby said, “in mountains, in anything that got in its way. And now the holes form a large portion of its fixed orbit.”
Squawk.
“Its mass must be on the order of—”
Squawk.
“—process of making the holes slowed it, so that now it travels just fast enough—”
Squawk.
“—maintain its orbit and penetrate occasional objects such as—”
Squawk.
“—and sand dunes—”
Squawk.
“My God, I know it’s a mathematical monstrosity,” Allenby snarled. “I didn’t put it there!”
Squawk.
Allenby was silent for a moment. Then he said slowly, “A name?”
Squawk.
“H’m,” said Allenby. “Well, well.” He appeared to brighten just a little. “So it’s up to me, as leader of the expedition, to name it?”
Squawk.
“Well, well,” he said.
That chop-licking tone was in his voice. We’d heard it all too often before. We shuddered, waiting.
“Inasmuch as Mars’ outermost moon is called Deimos, and the next Phobos,” he said, “I think I shall name the third moon of Mars—Bottomos”
Ray Bradbury - KALEIDOSCOPE
It would be indecent and insulting to both the author and the reader for me to make any extended comment on this story. Only one is needed: no victories— even against outer space—have ever been or ever will be won wholly without losses...
The first concussion cut the ship up the side like a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on like a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.
“Barkley, Barkley, where are you?”
The sound of voices calling like lost children on a cold night.
“Woode, Woode!”
“Captain!”
“Hollis, Hollis, this is Stone.”
“Stone, this is Hollis. Where are you?”
“I don’t know, how can I? Which way is up? I’m falling. Good gosh, I’m falling.”
They fell. They fell as pebbles fall in the long autumns of childhood, silver and thin. They were scattered as jackstones are scattered from a gigantic throw. And now instead of men there were only voices—all kinds of voices. Disembodied and impassioned, in varying degrees of terror and resignation.
“We’re going away from each other.”
This was true. Hollis, swinging head over heels, knew this was true. He knew it with a vague acceptance. They were parting to go their separate ways, and nothing could bring them back. They were wearing their sealed-tight space suits with the glass tubes over their pale faces, but they hadn’t had time to lock on their force units. With them, they could be small lifeboats in space, saving themselves, saving others, collecting together, finding each other until they were an island of men with some plan. But without the force units snapped to their shoulders they were meteors, senseless, each going to a separate and irrevocable fate.
A period of perhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror died and a metallic calm took its place. Space began to weave their strange voices in and out, on a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern.
“Stone to Hollis. How long can we talk by phone?”
“It depends on how fast you’re going your way and I’m going mine.”
“An hour, I make it.”
“That should do it,” said Hollis, abstracted and quiet.
“What happened?” said Hollis, a minute later.
“The rocket blew up, that’s all. Rockets do blow up.”
“Which way are you going?”
“It looks like I’ll hit the sun.”
“It’s Earth for me. Back to old Mother Earth at ten thousand miles per hour. I’ll bum like a match.” Hollis thought of it with a queer abstraction of mind. He seemed to be removed from his body, watching it fall down and down through space, as objective as he had been in regard to the first falling snowflakes of a winter season long gone.
The others were silent, thinking of the destiny that had brought them to this, falling, falling, and nothing they could do to change it. Even the captain was quiet, for there was no command or plan he knew that could put things back together again.
“Oh, it’s a long way down, oh, it’s a long way down,
a long, long, long way down,” said a voice. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, it’s a long way down.” “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stimson, I think. Stimson, is that you?”
“It’s a long way and I don’t like it, oh God, I don’t like it.”
“Stimson, this is Hollis, Stimson, you hear me?”
A pause while they fell separate from one another. “Stimson?”
“Yes.” He replied at last.
“Stimson, take it easy, we’re all in the same fix.”
“I don’t want to be here, I want to be somewhere else.”
“There’s a chance we’ll be found.”
“I must be, I must be,” said Stimson. “I don’t believe this, I don’t believe any of this is happening.”
“It’s a bad dream,” said someone.
“Shut up!” said Hollis.
“Come and make me,” said the voice. It was Applegate. He laughed noisily, with a similar objectivity. “Come and shut me up.”
Hollis for the first time felt the impossibility of his position. A great anger filled him, for he wanted more than anything in existence at this moment to be able to do something to Applegate. He had wanted for many years to do something and now it was too late. Applegate was only a telephonic voice.
Falling, falling, falling!
Now, as if they had discovered the horror, two of the men began to scream. In a nightmare, Hollis saw one of them float by, very near, screaming and screaming.
“Stop it!” The man was almost at his fingertips, screaming insanely. He would never stop. He would go on screaming for a million miles, as long as he was in radio range, disturbing all of them, making it impossible for them to talk to one another.
Hollis reached out. It was best this way. He made the extra effort and touched the man. He grasped the man’s ankle and pulled himself up along the body until he reached the head. The man screamed and clawed frantically, like a drowning swimmer. The screaming filled the universe.
One way or the other, thought Hollis. The sun or Earth or meteors will kill him, so why not now?
He smashed the man’s glass mask with his iron fist. The screaming stopped. He pushed off from the body and let it spin away on its own course, falling, falling.
Falling, falling down space went Hollis and the rest of them in the long
, endless dropping and whirling of silent terror.
“Hollis, you still there?”
Hollis did not speak, but felt the rush of heat in his face.
“This is Applegate again.”
“All right, Applegate.”
“Let’s talk. We haven’t anything else to do.”
The captain cut in. “That’s enough of that. We’ve got to figure a way out of this.”
“Captain, why don’t you shut up?” said Applegate.
“What!”
“You heard me, Captain. Don’t pull your rank on me, you’re ten thousand miles away by now, and let’s not kid ourselves. As Stimson puts it, it’s a long way down.”
“See here, Applegate!”
“Can it. This is a mutiny of one. I haven’t a dang thing to lose. Your ship was a bad ship and you were a bad captain and I hope you roast when you hit . the sun.”
“I’m ordering you to stop!”
“Go on, order me again!” Applegate smiled across ten thousand miles. The captain was silent. Applegate continued, “Where were we, Hollis? Oh, yes, I remember. I hate you, too. But you know that. You’ve known it for a long time.”
Hollis clenched his fists, hopelessly.
“I want to tell you something,” said Applegate. “Make you happy I was the one who blackballed you with the Rocket Company five years ago.”
A meteor flashed by. Hollis looked down and his left hand was gone. Blood spurted. Suddenly there was no air in his suit. He had enough air in his lungs to move his right hand over and twist a knob at his left elbow, tightening the joint and sealing the leak. It had happened so quickly that he was not surprised. Nothing surprised him any more. The air in the suit came back to normal in an instant now that the leak was sealed. And the blood that had flowed so swiftly was pressured as he fastened the knob yet tighter, until it made a tourniquet.
Great Stories of Space Travel Page 5