THE MESSAGES from “outside” had become the big and serious confrontation, dwarfing even the trouble with the drive.
Airman Humphries had been right enough about the pictures. At 1447 hours the next afternoon the Martian, as Dane sometimes thought of the sender of the signals because of its continual references to itself as the “One,” began suddenly to transmit a varied stream of the photograph-like pictures that Humphries had described. Interspersed among the established number symbols were pictures of Houck, of men in pressure suits, of lichens growing in various patterns, including the plant peninsula running out to a very passable portrayal of the spacecraft. And then came the disturbing fragments of scenes from within the spacecraft.
“How do they know what the inside of the Far Venture looks like?” Noel fretted. “How could they get inside to spy on us. Maybe you were right about them being microscopic.”
“They are not inevitably hostile,” Dane told him.
That, Noel came back, was yet to be determined. In the meantime it was evident they were very close. It would be folly to regard them otherwise than as potentially hostile and dangerous.
The pictures resembled what the photographic men called reticulated negatives, illumined from below. They lacked all fine detail, but the identity of the images was nevertheless unmistakable, the outlines realistically sure and the shadows and highlights contrasty but showing some tonal value. Most of the “shots” from within the Far Venture offered no apparent relevancy to their association with each other. There was one of a ladder, another of a man climbing a ladder. There was one of a man lying on a cot, another of the empty cot. Some showed men climbing into, or out of, the airlock.
Among the yet uncoded picture sequences that Dane thought were ideogrammatic, two at least, if his inference was correct, were not assuring.
The oft-repeated sequence of the death picture of Houck among the lichens and one of a pressure suit standing up could very well say, Living men will die, or more directly, Death to the invader. More disturbing inference might easily be drawn from the juxtaposition of generative components of the drive with clumps of lichens. Considering the corrosive quality of the lichen plant, maybe in some way even an instrument of power or productive of a weapon for the Martians—acid war—this sequence might be intended to say, We have destroyed your means of escape.
Noel was right, of course. The Martians would be dangerous at the least hostile move of the other-world invaders. What they might regard as a hostile act was unimaginable. To a worm the tenderest songbird would be a horrendous, devouring monster, cruel and implacable.
“They are probably very much afraid of us,” Dane said to him. “To them our physical appearance must be revolting, if not terrifying. Our size may be enormous. Inadvertently we may have harmed or even killed some of them. We’ve got to convince them of our good will, but how to do it when we don’t even have any good guesses about what kind of life they are?”
For three days the Martians continued to transmit—and ignore all replies. The one-way communications were spasmodic, coming in at various hours of the afternoon or early night but never for longer than a few minutes at a time. The careful teaching procedure of earlier transmissions remained, but there the Martians stopped. Apparently they were indifferent to any sign of understanding from their pupils.
“It’s a peculiar business,” he told Major Noel at supper. “They teach us a way to talk to them, but they pay no attention to anything we send out. It begins to look as though all the curiosity is ours. Why aren’t they as curious about us as we are about them? An encyclopedia of questions waiting to be answered. Earth comes to Mars. What are we like? Where are we from? Yet they try to teach us how to talk to them and then ignore us.”
The sharp-twisted features lit up. “Maybe the bastards are exclusive. Maybe they’re just getting ready to give us our orders. All we will have to do is say, ‘Understand and will comply.’” He pushed the bottle of calvados closer to Dane’s elbow. “We’ll have to get it over to them that we don’t want to play rough but that we can if we have to. And plenty.”
Dane said, “It would be a great pity. A confession of the inadequacy of intelligence.”
Noel measured himself out a nightcap. “It’s too bad. But what else can we expect? I suppose a guy like you would know about the big flying-saucer scares two or three generations ago. Everybody in those days just naturally took it for granted that if there were really beings coming to Earth from another world, they would be dangerous and hostile.” He tossed off his brandy and stood up. “I’m for the bunk. It’s a long day in this big can.”
It made Dane think of his managing editor. He would have had a field day with the flying saucers. From a continuing story like that the legended Telford Ames would have extracted a million dollars’ worth of rich red sustenance for the common man and ramrodded the arteries and the lesser vessels of Amalgamated Press full of it to the bursting, down to the farthest, most insignificant capillary.
Well, Ames had brought Amalgamated more major beats and cash-ringing features than Dane had written stories for it, but his parting counsel made him squirm to suppose, say, Noel listening in on it. “Dane,” he had led off, “I had to go to the White House to get you on the Far Venture. Over your old friend Colonel Cragg’s dead body. He’s back down to size all right now, but he was very positively averse to you under any circumstances. He put it rather too strongly for us, so that it reflected on Amalgamated. We couldn’t tolerate that. Not by a damn sight. We were able to put it up to them rather successfully that if only one journalist could be included in the party, then as an impartial representative of all the news interests he undoubtedly must be from Amalgamated. Whence else? Naturally we could not submit to coercion in our choice among our own men. We must appoint to the task whichever one we ourselves considered our most suitable representative. It was a neat piece of work, and your colonel may be rash but he is no fool. He still deeply resents your war dispatches about him, and I must say I don’t blame him, although from our point of view they were good. They were news with a capital N. Properly good. A hero is just a very ordinary sort of fellow caught up in events he triumphs over. Very good thematic stuff, but Cragg still doesn’t care for it. Good reader identification for the common man. Damn good. Every man a daydream hero to himself, if the circumstances could just somehow be right for him. Brought you to my attention.”
He had poked the spatulate finger at Dane. “Now here’s the story for Amalgamated. Our subscriber editors will want the science copy, just as much as all the other members of the pool. That’s your official reason for going along. Just the same, I don’t want you to forget it’s not your primary job for Amalgamated. Our Amalgamated readers want to bleed over the flight of the Far Venture, not study a lot of professor data that might be collected. Sure, they are interested in the climate and the terrain. They want to hear about the biological forms on Mars. They even have some curiosity about the weather there and maybe the chemistry of the atmosphere. A few photographs and graphs and charts with captions will take care of all that.”
He jabbed the paragraphing finger again. “What our readers really want to do, though, is bleed over a man standing on another world and knowing his wife and kids are a hundred million miles away. They want to know how he sleeps nights and how he eats his meals in the daytime on Mars. They want to know that the bravest of the crew was not ashamed to be afraid, because he was sustained by the spirit. Wave the flag, man, and don’t forget the church for the old-timers.
“They want to know what the men look forward to doing first after they get back to Earth. Go to the fights? Go out on a picnic with the kids? Marry the girl friend? Buy a home with the bonus money for down payment? You want to tell our readers how it feels to climb out into the planetary cold and walk around in an air-conditioned pressure suit. But most of all they want to bleed over the daily life of one of the crew. Give them a young, clean-cut American boy brought up by his mother’s teachings. Show them Mars through his eyes and how his upbringing helps him. I want every mother in America to bleed for the mothers with boys on the Far Venture. And every wife to suffer with the wives suffering at home. There’s a woman behind every man on that space ship. There’s your news with a capital N. I want every woman in America to feel down deep inside what it is to give a man to the Far Venture and sacrifice so much to meet this challenge to the spirit of man triumphing over unbelievable odds. Now give it to me from there. All the way.”
Not one precious paragraph had he yet set down to glorify the brave little nation builders whose travail brings forth strong men children. But the chore lay in wait. Fifty thousand words of it. A hundred thousand driveling words of it. If the return to Earth was accomplished. Daily installments. Exclusive. An Amalgamated Exclusive: “Men on Mars.” Only the fact that radio to Earth was out had saved him so far.
Work three years for Amalgamated and success. Endure for three years and success guaranteed. Please the great Ames and be anointed pimp for the bravely suppressed snivelling of fifty million frumps. He went into the toilet and relieved himself. In the spotless mirror over the lavatory the face that looked back was sharply outlined, the jaw line unblurred and reasonably uncompromising. He smote his belly. Not too much physical softness. It was in the mind, agreeing to connive and scheme like an ad man for the attention of idiot dreamers.
He splashed his face with the flat, manufactured water and dampened his close-cut hair, knowing he wasn’t going to do it. Even saying it aloud to the gurgle of the drain. For whoever came and found it, he was going to write about how long and unheroic it was to die shut in a can—even unafraid once it had become inevitable—just as it was for an infantry soldier of a defeated army in one of the old wars, dying near the end in a confused woods from unaimed fire, after years of shrewd personal dealings with tanks and automatic weapons and probing patrols. It was no different on Mars. Not by a damn sight.
In the morning he woke to a bad taste from the brandy and a reluctance to get out of the bed. In the act of throwing back the sheet he remembered. He smiled caustically at the bottle of calvados he had brought with him for a last one-for-the-road.
Even so, he felt good. Considering the situation of the spacecraft, it was unlikely that Amalgamated would soon, if ever, know that he had resigned, but he could feel better about it.