Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Read online

  “But you said something of a biological effect, a breakdown—”

  “In the very real sense, Mr. LaTharn, that there cannot be rise from the bottom of life to its top—beast to civilized being—without change, without price. The primate loses his hair; his limbs straighten, his cranial volume alters, certain organs become vestigial, others develop—and he grows older, wears out at length, and at length, dies. The Life-force is spent! It has wrought its changes, gone its course, and is used up!

  “What is it that is not in a corpse that is in a living body? What change is there to measure? Something, yes, but what has gone? What has been exhausted? A purely biological quantity that has eluded our science? Some unguessed, undefinable energy-form beyond the ability of our most sensitive instruments to detect?

  “You of Earth—you, who are at that terrifying point just between adolescence and adulthood—you have not grasped this thing. We, who have lived through a long and fruitful maturity and into our old age as a race—neither have we grasped it; we have but become aware of its presence in the Universe, common to all, at work in differing ways in differing places, each race with its share, unique unto, itself.

  “We have succeeded in measuring. We have determined the limit of our racial life-span quite precisely. But beyond that, the secret is not ours.

  “I am a Teacher, Mr. LaTharn. I have done my best to explain. It is all I know of the reason that we of Mars have no escape; that we must die. You, unfortunately, have found us in our last hours.”

  LYA’S smile was a tired, pitiful thing, and yet there was a courage in it that a thousand shouting men could not emulate.

  My throat was dry, and there was a thing of red heat stirring deep inside me, searing in my vitals for release, and finding my hands, my brain quite numb, quite helpless, and itself trapped and futile.

  And suddenly I was on my feet, and almost roughly, I grasped her slender shoulders and turned her to face me. I had to say something. Anything at all.

  “Lya, we won’t let this thing—this whatever-it-is—we won’t let it win!” I could feel the muscles of my throat straining, my voice hurting my throat. “Perhaps our scientists at home—they will not be the equal of yours for centuries, of course—but there may be some thing, some small, seemingly insignificant thing they know that yours have somehow by some odd chance overlooked. Let us try! If, somehow, this Life-force of which you speak—if in some way we might trap it, analyze, isolate it, transfer some of what we have—”

  “No, Mr. LaTharn,” Lya said softly. And it was “no” beyond all doubting, but there was a gratefulness in it that was felt more than heard. “You must understand that science is not the beginning and end of all things.

  “Through some physical miracle to be kept walking, talking—yes, even thinking, perhaps—no, for we would not be ourselves . . . as robots, as . . . living-dead. A retrogression of a sort we could not endure, even for a kind of life!

  “You must forgive us for that. Our pride. We are a very proud race in our way, Mr. LaTharn. If, somehow, there were a way and it had been ours to find, or yours to give, it would afford us only the past to live and re-live—there would be no future for us. None, you see, because we have come to our flower, and are about to go our way. We have lived our life. What else there might be would be but a mockery of the Universal scheme of things—and our great life has never been one of mockery, or of pretense, Mr. LaTharn. For us, to pretend is not to live at all.”

  There was a long silence. And at length, I had understood.

  And still was about to speak my protest of the way of the Universe once more, for it is too painful a thing for youth to admit to the unyielding certitude of death.

  And gently, she placed a finger on my lips.

  “Thank you, Wes,” she said. “From our hearts, thank you.”

  V

  THE trip back to the Enclosures was with the coldness of the desert filling my insides, and I tried to think about how mad Kruger would be when he found out I hadn’t called home.

  But it didn’t help. I kept thinking of the girl beside me, and of her desperate little adventure to reach out and touch, if she could, if for just a moment, a breath of the seething ocean of life from which the E-M-1 had come, and to which it would return.

  I tried to think about Kruger, but it didn’t help . . .

  The next day I told Max all about it; I shouldn’t have, but I knew that whatever reaction it brought, at least there would be no deception between us. And you take a different slant on deception when there are only two of you, over forty million miles from home. A team can’t go haywire. When it does, you can count on death to be quick at taking advantage of the weaknesses that follow organizational breakdown.

  We were in our quarters, dressing and getting ready for the day’s work ahead.

  “You’re a sucker for a line, Wes.”

  “I am? Tell me, Doc, what’ve we got on that ship that they haven’t, and ten times better? And these aren’t the kind of people who carve their initials on things for posterity. Their children don’t even do that.”

  He turned to face me, and I could see then that despite himself, he believed the story I had told him.

  “All right. They’re dying. It’s up to them what they do, not us. We aren’t dying. We’ve got a job to do—to complete, and we’ve got to step on it because without their help we’ll be set back half a century. So let’s do it.”

  He turned, pulled his khaki shirt on, cinched the broad belt at his waist.

  “Doc, it’s time to bow out.” I said it quietly, and I tried to make it hard and level.

  He didn’t even turn around. “It’s time to bow out when I say so. We’ve been working eight hours at a stretch, eight for sleep, and eight more for work again. Starting today it’s nine, six and nine. And it’ll be ten, four and ten if I think it’s necessary.” He turned to me. “Got it?” He could have said “That’s an order,” but he didn’t have to. His face was still friendly, but his eyes were hard, and it meant that Dr. Max Kruger was still running the show. “Yeah, all right,” I said. “Sure.”

  “I’m sorry about what’s happening to them, naturally. But in our own interests we’ve got to get as much as we can while we can. And if they want to stick with us up to their last ten minutes, that’s up to them, and we’ll be happy for their services—period.”

  YES, it was logic. The government hadn’t spent almost a billion bucks on us to throw away what few breaks we might get. We had to squeeze out every nickel’s worth of information we could. It wasn’t our dough. The money had bought us the equipment to do a grade-A job the first time out—money that the scientists back home had wrangled with Congress for God-knows-how-long to get. They had bought us a little over five years in Space; five years of food, of air to breathe, of fuel to burn. If we could complete the job in five months instead of five years, then we were expected to bring back the change. Men at their first time at bat in Space weren’t in a position to waste as much as a flashlight battery. Whatever we saved, the next expedition in the E-M-1 would have.

  And that included wear and tear on the ship itself. Jobs like the E-M-1 took five years to build, and right now, pending the outcome of its maiden voyage, it was the only one Earth owned.

  I added it all up in my head, fast, and added it up again. And the way it’s done on Earth, two and two always come out to four.

  “You’d give ’em ten minutes. I like that—that’s generous.”

  “Listen, LaTharn—”

  “Sorry, Max. Forget it and let’s go.” He looked at me that hard way again, started to say something, and didn’t. I picked up my dicto and started to go.

  “Don’t go away mad, kid!” The smile was back on his face, but it looked as if it had been pasted there.

  “No,” I said. “No. Wouldn’t think of it. Kid. But let’s just be sure, since we’re going to be on this new hopped-up schedule, that we don’t miss anything. Let’s be sure to get it all down. All the things there are
to know about these people that aren’t in their books, aren’t on their recording tapes . . . I hope you know where to look. Max. See you in nine hours.” I went out, my staff was waiting for me, and we went to work.

  DURING the last three months I tried to find one Martian, as I walked among their ever-thinning numbers on the broad thoroughfares and in the great, wide parks, and worked with them in closer proximity—I tried to find one who might come up to me and say, “Earthman, we are dying. Go home, that we might do it in peace, and by ourselves. Leave us; we are not hosts to strangers who can return to homes abounding with life, while we ourselves daily enter our graves. Go home, Earthman!”

  I tried to find one, and I could not, and I thought of the situation reversed . . .

  And when we did at length go, on a day of their last days, it would be only for eight months—four for the trip home, four for the next expedition with its Development Survey experts, planning their carnival of buy and sell, stake and claim before the dead of Mars were cold in their great tombs.

  It made me sick inside, and I could not look Lya squarely in the face; I could not look Kell-III in the face and say something traditional and noble like “We will carry on, be at rest.” For I knew my people would be dancing over his sandswept sepulchre, with comicbooks for sale . . .

  And at length, as it had to, the day came.

  Kell-III had told Kruger, and thank God Kruger had had enough presence of mind to act as though it were a terrible shock, and to profess that we had had no idea, or we should certainly not have imposed on such gracious hospitality. But he had the right words, and all the words Earthmen know so well how to use when their minds think one thing and their tongues are quite sincerely saying another.

  It was all transparent enough to Kell-III of course—hadn’t he and his people studied us to the point where our shortcomings were painfully obvious? Quite typical I v, he accepted Kruger’s moving sympathies as though they were genuine. Even to that, Kell-III and his people remained the flawless hosts.

  The winding ramps, the broad streets, the soft parks were silent with their ever-dwindling throngs as the people of Mars who still lived sought their temples.

  The shallow lakes were still, and the green beaches had long since been empty; the time of living was nearly over.

  Somehow, after the Teachers and their aides had made their apologies—oh yes, apologies—had come to us one by one during the last weeks to wish us good luck with our new venture in quest of the stars, had said good-by and then melted, one by one, day by day, into the silent processions, I managed to see Lya for a final time.

  There was not much. There was no way to say all the words I’d planned so carefully, for I was not a Martian, and my skill to say such words was inadequate.

  “I am sorry, Learned One,” I said.

  And there was again a smile on her face; once more, a smile of some inner gratitude, and, I like to think, of understanding of my inadequacy, and of forgiveness, for it.

  “Do not be, Wesley LaTharn,” she said. And for a moment, it was hard for me to see her. “Know that much of your share is left; that the next five hundred thousand years are yours, and that we are glad for you. A happy future, Mr. LaTharn.”

  Her smile was radiant as she said it, and she was smiling still as she left to follow the others.

  Then I found Kruger, and together we made our way to the track.

  I tried not to hear the blast of our engine as it started, succeeded in not looking back as we left the Enclosures and headed for the E-M-1.

  It took us less than an hour to reach her, and an hour was just gone by the time we had the track aboard and were ready to blast off.

  There was the low moaning of the cold wind among the dunes as it raced to play its invisible game of blind-man’s-buff among them, and little clouds of sand whirled with it to make the Enclosures dimly-veiled things seven-hundred-thousand years and twenty miles behind us.

  “Let’s get aboard,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wes,” I heard Max say, “I can’t watch a people die any easier than you . . .

  We didn’t say anything more, but just clambered in and blasted clear.

  I hoped that back in the Enclosures, Martian hymns drowned us out as though we’d never existed.

  THE visiscreen was a black velvet tapestry studded with all the jewelry Nature wore for men to see, and I was thankful that Kruger wasn’t trying to make small talk. I wouldn’t have answered him and I think he knew it. It went on that way for a week or so.

  After that I guess he couldn’t take it, or maybe he’d been thinking thoughts of his own, but finally he opened up, and I found my own voice. “Underneath you think I’m quite a louse,” he said.

  “When you’re dead I hope somebody builds a hot-dog stand on your grave.”

  “Or a branch of the stock-exchange, I know. Probably somebody will. And I won’t be able to stop it, Wes.”

  He turned his face a little from the computer panels, helped himself to one of my cigarettes. The hardness I’d expected to see wasn’t there, and I started feeling mixed up again.

  “You’d like me to ditch the ship night-side, square in the middle of the Pacific, wouldn’t you, laddie?”

  “The thought’s occurred to me! That way at least it’d be five years before they could get back up there, before the leeches could get their claws in—”

  “It would be romantic, anyway,” Max said, almost as though he were actually considering the idea. “Romantic as hell. But life goes on. It goes on, and we’ve got to bring her in, Wes.”

  “And he heroes.”

  “And be heroes.”

  I got a little bit profane. But Max wasn’t getting sore, because I guess he knew how close I was to going pffut. “All right,” I said finally. “Okay. So it’s not our fault they’re dying—dead . . . but the one time in our lives we’re in a position to do something decent for that mob back home, whether they like it or not, and we’re still going to do the thing their way. Take your logic and your damn budget and your Development Survey ghouls and go to hell. Step right up ladies and gentlemen, genuine Martian real-estate, just vacated. And in addition, a roller-coaster in the back yard, every home should have one—” He let me go on like that for I don’t know how long. We were just loafing through the Big Dark, and I finally yelled at him to boot the thing in the rear and get us home and get it over with. And lie just gave me that grin. “Always in a hurry,” he said.

  “Me? I’m the guy who wants them to have the privacy of their own—death, for a while . . . remember? But I guess that’s one of those romantic ideas.”

  “Kind of. Kind of. It won’t be very romantic cooped up in here with me for the next five years, though.”

  I looked at him, and that damn grin was still there. I noted that our speed indicator hadn’t climbed a centimeter.

  “Speed control got jammed, somehow,” Max said seriously. “Going to take us a hell of a while to get back, all right. Better get ‘em on the UHE, kid. Tell them five years. Tell them we’re both lousy mechanics, and we’re sorry as hell.” And now the grin was a smile.

  . . . Much of your share is left—a happy jut lire, Mr. LaTharn . . .

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out. “Shut up and pass the salt,” said Max.

  Beyond the X Ecliptic

  Earthman was dying of boredom; Hope had become folly. Work merely a means to avoid insanity. And death was the great reward . . . until Cragin, step-son of darkest space, dared the Barrier; dared to soar beyond the X Ecliptic—to the machine planet—where The Owners grimly governed all the fading galaxies.

  EARTH’S eyes still blinked in the bright sunlight in which they suddenly gloried again; Earth’s throats, no longer fevered and parched, still wondered at the cool feel of fresh water, which had not trickled down them for more than five centuries. Earth’s minds were still ignorant of the answer; they knew only that this was Life, although they had failed by themselves in cheating Death, and ha
d already calculated the dimensions for their graves.

  The small calendar on the podium said Sunday, June 9, 3024. Cragin placed a small black notebook beside it. Neither his carriage nor mien were those of the gauntfaced, tall-browed men of science who sat ill-at-ease, mute, in the broadly-aisled tiers of the echo-whispering auditorium. Foe Cragin was not one of them. He was young-old, something of slate and steel; gray, something almost of legend and of the mystery of Deep Space itself. He had the quiet voice of all men who had lived their Jives within arm’s length of the Barrier.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, “I doubt if I have many of the scientific answers you want. In calculated, scientific terms, I am not able to tell you why there is water once more in the river beds, clean air to breathe again, snow once more in winter and rain again in springtime. I know little more than the simple facts that the grass is once more green; that the hell-deserts have vanished. I have come here with few heretofore unknown scientific phenomena which I know you seek to explain the rekindling of the Sun and the replacement of Earth in its old path around it.

  “The President told me that all I say is to be recorded so that you can pick it apart with the proverbial fine-tooth comb when I’m finished to see if I’ve dropped some new hint on which you can go to work. He told me personally that I’m your last hope for a solution to the riddle of the Change, because I’m the only living man who ever took a ship further than a light-year beyond the Barrier; because I’ve flown more parsecs of Deep Space than anybody else; because I know more about what’s out there, and what is not, than you do.

  “Add what I have to tell you to the many theories you’ve already amassed but for which you can find no scientific proof in knowledge as you know it, and you still may not have the kind of answer for which you’re looking. Not unless, gentlemen, the change has taken place in men as well as in the solar system in which their graves were once already dug.

  “If, somehow, the little I know is sufficient to give you your answer; an answer which satisfies you completely, then the Change has been to yourselves as well as the ground upon which you walk. If it is not, then perhaps you may never have one.