Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  He had something far more interesting to occupy his mind, and besides, a rather astounding idea had just occurred to him. Old Doc Waters and Yvonne might laugh at the notion; and then again they might be struck by it just as he had been. He’d have to try it out on them right away.

  He tossed the handful of waste carelessly into a metal box, then made a perfunctory reading of the meters and instruments banked close and bewilderingly on the switchboard. He adjusted a small rheostat and jotted something down on a chart on the wall with a red crayon. Then, heedless of his light clothing and his perspiring condition, he hurried out into the frosty desert night.

  The breeze, cold and untainted by the smell of burning fuel oil, chilled his damp body uncomfortably, but he did not heed it. The steady thud of the exhaust of the high-compression motor in the iron shack receded rapidly behind him as he ran up a path which led to the summit of a low hill.

  On the crest of a neighboring knoll, a broad patch of dazzling light winked on and off regularly, where scores of huge searchlights poured their billions of candlepower toward the twinkling stars, in systematically arranged long and short spurts. Jack Cantrill’s glance toward them was brief but intense. His lips moved as though he were counting to himself.

  The door of the domed observatory building at the top of the hill opened at his touch. He passed through a small lean-to and entered the brick-lined circular chamber that housed the telescope. Here a single shaded lamp cast a subdued glow over a big desk on which various opened notebooks and papers were scattered. Amid the litter an astronomer’s chronometer ticked loudly in shadowed stillness. The gloom was eerie and soft and strange.

  Jack Cantrill made his way quietly to the low platform under the eyepiece of the telescope, where the other two occupants of the room stood.

  The girl was pretty in a blond, elfin sort of way. She smiled briefly at Jack’s approach.

  “Any luck, folks?” he inquired.

  He was trying to make his voice sound calm and casual, but a tense and excited huskiness crept into his words and spoiled his bluff.

  Professor Waters looked up from the eyepiece of the big instrument. The glow coming from the nearby lamp accentuated the tired lines of his face, making him look almost haggard. He grinned wearily.

  “Not yet, boy,” he said. “It seems as though Old Faithful has deserted us completely. It’s funny, too, when you remember that when conditions were at all favorable for observation, he hasn’t failed me once in nine years. And yet this is the second night that he hasn’t given us a sign. The shaded side of Mars hasn’t shown a single flicker that you can see, and even the photoelectric cell doesn’t detect anything.”

  The young man glanced uncertainly at the girl and then back at her father. The fingers of one of his hands crept slowly through his curly red hair. With the air of a small schoolboy about to make his first public address, he was fumbling with a soiled sheet of paper he had taken from his pocket. He felt rather sheepish about that idea he had thought of.

  “Yvonne— Doc—” he said almost plaintively, in an awkward attempt to get their undivided attention centered on what he was going to say. “I’m not much of a scientist, and maybe I’m a darned fool; but—well, this message—the final one we received the night before last—we thought it was just a jumble but, when you read it, it almost has meaning. Here, listen to it once.”

  Clearing his throat he proceeded to read from the sheet of paper: “Comet coming. Yes. Comet coming. Yes. Comet coming of Man of Mars. Comet Man of Mars coming toward Earth. Comet coming Man of Mars. Man of Mars. Comet. Man of Mars. Comet. Man of Mars. Comet. Yes, yes, yes. Man of Earth. Yes, yes, yes. Signing off. Signing off.”

  Jack Cantrill’s thin cheeks were flushed when he stopped reading.

  “Get it?” he asked in a husky whisper. “Get any sense out of that?”

  Yvonne Waters’ pretty face had paled slightly. “You mean, Jack—you mean that he wanted to say that he was coming here, across fifty million miles of emptiness? He can’t do that! He can’t! It’s too far and too impossible!”

  Her concerned manner bolstered up the youth’s confidence in his idea. “You caught on to exactly what I thought of,” he said.

  Professor Waters did not betray any outward excitement. His manner was musing, and he rubbed his cheek reflectively. “I thought of that, too,” he admitted after a moment. “But it seemed too wild for serious consideration. Still there’s a chance—that you are right.”

  The thought put into words seemed suddenly to startle the old man. “Gad, boy!” he exploded suddenly. “Supposing it is the truth! Old Faithful signaled about the comet. If there’s anything to this at all, the comet must be tied up with his coming. And for all we know the comet might help. It passes close to both Earth and Mars. If in some way he could fall into its gravitation field, it would drag him almost all the way. That’s it! It would save an enormous energy. It would put his trip, otherwise still impossible, into the realm of possibility!”

  “You get me at last, doc,” Jack said quickly. “And when you say, ‘Supposing it’s the truth,’ think of what it means! The navigation of interplanetary space, maybe! Commerce between Earth and Mars! A new and wonderful era, with the minds of one world exchanging ideas with the minds of another.”

  Unconsciously Jack Cantrill had taken Yvonne Waters’ hand. Her eyes were starry.

  “If it did happen we’d all be heroes, Jack,” she said. “Dad and you and I. We’d be the ones to get the credit.”

  “We would, Yvonne,” Jack admitted with a chuckle.

  It was the professor’s turn to smile. “You two have got the whole business nicely ready-made, haven’t you?” he chided. Then his face sobered as he went on: “The gap is pretty wide between Earthman and Martian; and in consequence yours may be very far off, even if that guess of ours about the message is right.

  “We don’t know that Martians are human beings. The chances are a million to one that they aren’t. It is very unlikely that evolution, operating on so different a planet, could produce a being even remotely resembling a man. We don’t even know that the people of Mars use speech as we use it. Old Faithful certainly is very intelligent, yet the way he has fumbled blunderingly with our code seems to indicate that even a faint conception of vocal speech is something new and strange to him.

  “Those are some of the gaps, but there may be sinister similarities between Earthmen and Martians.

  “Who knows but that something darker lies behind what we think is friendly interest in us? Sometimes conquest is more satisfying than commerce. We can’t tell.” Professor Waters paused.

  “Making it extra strong, aren’t you, doc?” Jack put in.

  “I guess I am, and now I think I’ll do a little news-spreading.” The professor strode to the desk.

  “Human or not, I hope the Martians are handsome,” Yvonne confided impishly to Jack.

  “And I hope they’re not, darling,” he replied, putting his arm affectionately about her waist. He was about to add something more when what the girl’s father was saying into the telephone riveted their attention.

  “Long distance? I’m calling Washington. I want to speak directly to Mr. Grayson, the Secretary of War. Strange call? Perhaps. But put it through.”

  Before dawn all the observatories of Earth had begun their watch.

  * * * *

  V

  Far away on the Red Planet, the work of Number 774 went steadily forward. Then came the night when all was ready except for one thing. A powerful urge, the roots of which are deeply implanted in the dominant forms of life on both Earth and Mars, and perhaps the whole universe, was calling him to a city at the joining place of four canals, far to the east. In that urge there was a pathetic something, perfectly understandable by human standards.

  The bright stars reeled dizzily before Number 774 as he swooped out over the desert on the wings of the ornithopter that bore him and sped eastward. He must be cautious, but above all he must hurry.

&nbs
p; An hour or so slipped by. The Martian’s big eyes, keen and catlike, picked out in the broad cleft of a canal a gigantic angular shape, looming dim and uncertain in the gloom. Inconspicuous as a drifting shadow, he settled toward it. The talons of his automaton found a metal panel that slipped aside at a touch. The green glow of the immense well thus revealed dropped away into deserted obscurity. In a moment he was floating down it, past myriads of openings, from which radiated the labyrinthine tunnels of the buried Martian city.

  He entered one of these passages and followed it for perhaps a mile, until he came to a vast chamber, pervaded by a moist, humid heat. The floor was covered with thousands of boxes of clear crystal; and in each box was a purple gob of something feeble and jellylike and alive.

  Aided perhaps by some Martian numeral system, Number 774 found his way to the box he sought. At his touch the lid opened. He had dismounted from his automaton, and now, creeping forward, he thrust a slender appendage into the crystal case.

  A score of nerve filaments, fine, almost, as human hair, darted out from the chitinous shell that protected them and roved caressingly over the lump of protoplasm. Immediately it responded to the gentle touch of the strange creature that had sired it. Its delicate integument quivered, and a thin pseudopod oozed up from its jellylike form and enveloped the nerve filaments of Number 774. For minutes the two remained thus, perfectly motionless.

  It was a bizarre travesty of a touching and perfectly human situation; yet its utter strangeness by Earthly standards robbed it of some of its pathos. No words were spoken, no sign of affection that a terrestrial being could interpret was given; and yet perhaps the exchange of feeling and thought and emotion between parent and offspring was far more complete than anything of the kind possible on Earth.

  Number 774 did not forget caution. Perhaps it was intuition that informed him that someone was coming. Quickly, yet without haste, he regained his automaton, replaced the lid on the crystal box, and slipped quietly away into the luminescent obscurity of the tunnel. In a few minutes he had safely reached the open of the canal bed. Broad wings flapped, and the starlit night swallowed him up.

  As he hurried back toward his hidden valley, he saw the silvery green speck of Earth dip beneath the western horizon. The sight of it must have aroused a turmoil of forebodings within him; for absently, as if he were already facing unknown horrors in mortal combat, he moved a small switch, and in response a jagged flash of flame leaped from an apparatus carried on a long arm of his flying automaton. Where the bolt struck, the desert sand turned molten.

  Above, the comet glowed, pallid and frosty and swollen. It was very near to Mars now.

  Having reached his valley, Number 774 descended into the pit. A silvery thing that was ill defined in the uncertain light loomed over him. A door opened and closed, and Number 774 was alone and busy amid a bewildering array of machinery.

  There came a blinding flash of incandescence, and a roar that sounded like the collision of two worlds; then a shrill, tortured, crackling whistle. The pit glowed white-hot, and the silvery thing was gone. Above the pit, towering many miles into the sky, was an immense jetted plume of vapor, shining rosy with heat. It would be many minutes before that huge gaseous cloud would cool sufficiently to be invisible.

  The body of Number 774 was battered and torn and broken; the terrific acceleration was crushing him; consciousness was slipping, even though he was exerting a tremendous effort of will to cling to it. In a few minutes it would not matter if he did go out, but now there were controls to watch and to handle. If they were not manipulated properly everything he had done was for naught.

  But the blackness of oblivion was closing in. He struggled valiantly to master himself and to fight through the gathering gloom that was misting his vision and clouding his mind. Though his whole being cried out for a cessation of torturing effort, still he kept fiercely at his task. There was too much at stake. That little globe there—it was glowing red when it should glow violet. It must be attended to. The craft was wobbling, and it must not wobble. A trifling adjustment of delicate stabilizers would fix that, if he could only somehow make the adjustment.

  A dribble of sticky, oozy fluid welled from a wound in Number 774’s side. His limbs, some of them broken, fumbled awkwardly and inefficiently with the complicated controls. He was gasping, and all the while his glazing eyes remained fixed grimly on the form of the comet, toward which he and the strange craft he had built were hurtling. Could he reach it? He must!

  * * * *

  VI

  On Earth, Professor Waters, his daughter, and his young engineer, watched and waited. It was a tense, grueling task, heavy-laden with monotony, a thousand weird imaginings, and a horde of questions, none of which could be answered with any certainty.

  They were uncertain whether to be fearful of the unknown thing whose approach they sensed, or to be exultant. They did not even know whether their vigil was just a huge nerve-racking practical joke which their fancies had played upon them.

  Time dragged with torturing slowness. Tardy seconds became minutes, tedious minutes were built up into hours, and hours became days that seemed like centuries. And over the rest of the world, the vigil was much the same.

  On the ninth day after the last flickering message had come from Mars, Professor Waters had seen through his telescope, on the surface of the Red Planet, a fine dot of white light that, after its sudden appearance, faded quickly to red, and then, after a few minutes, disappeared altogether. A few hours later he thought he detected a slight and momentary ripple in the gaseous substance of the comets head, which then had just passed Mars on its sunward journey.

  Newspaper reporters who had come many miles to this lonely spot in the desert were constantly seeking interviews. The three watchers supplied them with all the information they knew; and at last, tiring of the additional strain of being constantly hounded by these persistent seekers after sensational news, they refused even to grant them admittance into the barbed-wire stockade of the camp.

  At last the comet reached its point of closest approach to the Earth. Faint and ashy though it was, low down in the sunlit afternoon heavens, still it was an awesome, impressive object, with its colossal, fan-shaped head and the vast curved sweep of its gigantic ghost-silver tail.

  When the desert dusk settled, the visiting wanderer increased a score of times in brilliance and glory. It had now passed the line and was hurtling away. And as yet nothing that would satisfy the eager hopes and fears of the watchers had happened.

  The three were standing on the veranda of the little adobe house they inhabited. All of a sudden Doctor Waters’ haggard face relaxed. He sighed heavily.

  “I guess that it has been proved that we are all of us fools,” he said wearily. “There hasn’t been much of anything to reward us for our pains.” His glance toward Jack Cantrill was slightly apologetic. “I think I’ll go to bed,” he added abruptly.

  Jack’s rather good-looking face twisted into a rueful smile. “Bed isn’t at all a bad idea,” he admitted. “I feel as though I could snooze a week straight without waking up. Well, anyway, if we’re fools, I’m the biggest one, because I started all this.” He looked at the old man and then at the girl. “Forgive me, Yvonne?” he queried good-humoredly.

  “No,” she replied with mock seriousness. “Making me lose so much of my beauty sleep like this! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” Her little speech was terminated by a faintly amused chuckle, and she pinched his cheek impishly.

  It was some hours after they had retired that a faint soughing noise began from somewhere, apparently at a great distance. It was like the sound of a suddenly stiffening night breeze, sweeping through a grove of pine trees. Something that glowed rosy with the heat of atmospheric friction swept in hurtling flight across the sky. A mile or so beyond the camp, broad thin flanges of metal shot out from it, and it made a feeble attempt to steady itself and check its almost meteoric speed. It wobbled, then fluttered down weakly. A cloud of dust and san
d rose where it smashed into the ground. But there was no human eye to see. For an hour or more it gave no further sign of life or motion.

  Yvonne Waters was a light sleeper. Unusual night noises ordinarily aroused her. The momentary soughing rustle caused her to stir, but she did not awaken. Then, toward four in the morning, another disturbance came. It was a faint stretching, creaking, straining sound, that nevertheless held a suggestion of powerful forces acting stealthily.

  Instantly Yvonne was wide awake. She sat up in bed, listening. What she heard produced quick and accurate associations in her nimble and cool young mind. A barbed-wire fence would make a creaking, straining noise like that, if something big and powerful were seeking tentatively to force an entrance. The stockade!

  Yes; she was right. Presently there came the sharp snap and snarl that told of the sudden parting of a taut wire. Four times the sound was repeated.