and take over. Maybe they'd wave a fewtimes and grin. If instead of being met like brothers, they were shotat, they'd be inclined to start shooting. If they got out alive, theirhatred would be everlasting. We had more sense.
Yet _passivity_ was a word that I didn't entirely like. It soundedspineless. The art of balancing naive trust exactly against hardcynicism, to try to produce something that makes a little sense, isn'talways easy. Though we knew something of Martians, we didn't knownearly enough. Our plan might be wrong; we might turn out to be deadidiots in a short time. Still, it was the best thing that we couldthink of.
The afternoon wore on. With the dropping temperature, a cold pearlyhaze began to form around the horizon. The landscape around us was tooquiet. And there was plenty of vegetation at hand to provide cover.Maybe it had been a mistake to land here. But we couldn't see that anarid place would be any good either. We had needed to come to a regionthat was probably inhabited.
We saw a Martian only once--scampering across an open glade, holdinghimself high on his stiffened tentacles. Here, where the gravity wasonly thirty-eight percent of the terrestrial, that was possible. Itlessened the eeriness a lot to know beforehand what a Martian lookedlike. He looked like Etl.
* * * * *
Later, something pinged savagely against the flank of our rocket. Sothere were trigger-happy individuals here, too. But I remembered how,on Earth, Etl's cage had been surrounded by machine-guns and cyanogentanks, rigged to kill him quickly if it became necessary. That hadn'tbeen malice, only sensible precaution against the unpredictable. Andwasn't our being surrounded by weapons here only the same thing, fromanother viewpoint? Yet it didn't feel pleasant, sensible or not.
There were no more shots for half an hour. But our tension mountedwith the waiting.
Finally Klein said through his helmet phone: "Maybe Etl ought to goout and scout around now."
Etl was naturally the only one of us who had much chance for success.
"Go only if you really want to, Etl," Miller said. "It could bedangerous even for you."
But Etl had already put on his oxygen mask. Air hissed into his cagefrom the greater pressure outside as he turned a valve. Then heunlatched the cage-door. He wouldn't be harmed by the brief exposureto atmosphere of Earth-density while he moved to our rocket's airlock.Now he was getting around high on his tendrils. Like a true Martian.
He left his specially built pistol behind, according to plan. We hadweapons, but we didn't mean to use them unless everything went deadwrong.
Etl's tendrils touched the dusty surface of Mars. A minute later, hedisappeared behind some scrub growths. Then, for ten minutes, thependant silence was heavy. It was broken by the sound of a shot,coming back to us thinly through the rarefied air.
"Maybe they got him," Craig said anxiously.
Nobody answered. I thought of an old story I'd read about a boy beingbrought up by wolves. His ways were so like an animal's that huntershad shot him. He had come back to civilization dead. Perhaps there wasno other way.
By sundown, Etl had not returned. So three things seemed possible: Hehad been murdered. He had been captured. Or else he had deserted tohis own kind. I began to wonder. What if we were complete fools? Whatif there were more than differences of body and background, plus thedread of newness, between Earthmen and Martians, preventing theirfriendship?
What if Martians were basically malevolent?
But speculation was useless now. We were committed to a line ofaction. We had to follow it through.
We ate a meager supper. The brief dusk changed to a night blazing withfrigid stars. But the darkness on the ground remained until the jaggedlump of light that was Phobos, the nearer moon, arose out of the west.Then we saw two shapes rushing toward our ship to find cover closer toit. As they hid themselves behind a clump of cactiform shrubs, I hadonly the memory of how I had seen them for a moment, their odd masksand accoutrements glinting, their supporting tendrils looking liketattered rags come alive in the dim moonlight.
* * * * *
We'd turned the light out in our cabin, so we couldn't be seen throughthe windows. But now we heard soft, scraping sounds against the outerskin of our rocket. Probably they meant that the Martians were tryingto get in. I began to sweat all over, because I knew what Miller meantto do. Here was a situation that we had visualized beforehand.
"We could shut them out till dawn, Miller," I whispered hoarsely."We'd all feel better if the meeting took place in day-light. Andthere'd be less chance of things going wrong."
But Miller said, "We can't tell what they'd be doing in the darkmeanwhile, Nolan. Maybe fixing to blow us up. So we'd better get thisthing over with now."
I knew he was right. Active resistance to the Martians could neversave us, if they intended to destroy us. We might have taken therocket off the ground like a plane, seeking safety in the upper airfor a while, if we could get it launched that way from the roughterrain. But using our jets might kill some of the Martians justoutside. They could interpret it as a hostile act.
We didn't matter much, except to ourselves. And our primary objectivewas to make friendly contact with the beings of this planet, withoutfriction, if it could be done. If we failed, space travel might becomea genuine menace to Earth.
At Miller's order, Craig turned on our cabin lights. Miller pressedthe controls of our ship's airlock. While its outer valve remainedwide, the inner valve unsealed itself and swung slowly toward us. Ourair whooshed out.
The opening of that inner valve meant we were letting horror in. Wekept out of line of possible fire through the open door.
Our idea was to control our instinctive reactions to strangeness, toremain passive, giving the Martians a chance to get over their ownprobable terror of us by finding out that we meant no harm. Otherwisewe might be murdering each other.
The long wait was agony. In spite of the dehumidifying unit of myspacesuit, I could feel the sweat from my body collecting in puddlesin the bottoms of my boots. A dozen times there were soft rustles andscrapes at the airlock; then sounds of hurried retreat.
But at last a mass of gray-pink tendrils intruded over the threshold.And we saw the stalked eyes, faintly luminous in the shadowy interiorof the lock. Grotesquely up-ended on its tentacles, the monster seemedto flow into the cabin. Over its mouth-palps was the cup of what musthave been its oxygen mask.
What was clearly the muzzle of some kind of pistol, smoothly machined,was held ready by a mass of tendrils that suggested Gorgon hair.Behind the first monster was a second, similarly armed. Behind him wasa third. After that I lost count, as the horde, impelled by fear tograb control in one savage rush, spilled into the cabin with adry-leaf rustle.
* * * * *
All my instincts urged me to yank my automatic out of my belt and letgo at that flood of horror. Yes, that was in me, although I'd been inintimate association with Etl for four years. Psychologists say thatno will power could keep a man's reflexes from withdrawing his handfrom a hot stove for very long. And going for my gun seemed almost areflex action.
There was plenty of sound logic to back up the urge to shoot. In thepresence of the unfathomable, how could you replace the tried defensesof instinct with intellectual ideas of good will?
On the other hand, to shoot now would be suicide and ruin our hopes,besides. So maybe there'd have to be human sacrifices to faith betweenthe planets. If we succeeded in following the plan, our faith wouldbe proven either right or wrong. If we didn't act passively, thefailure would be partly our fault. In any case, if we didn't get backto Earth, hatred and fear of the Martians would inevitably arisethere, whether it had been the Martians' fault or ours. The messagethat Miller had left for newscast might only give people theself-righteous attitude that Earthly intentions had been good. Ifanother expedition ever came to Mars, it might shoot any inhabitantson sight, and maybe get wiped out itself.
Still, how could we know that the Martians weren't prepa
ring the kindof invasion of Earth that has been imagined so often? It was a cornynotion, but the basis for it remained sound. Mars was a dying world.Couldn't the Martians still want a new planet to move to?
All these old thoughts popped back into my head during that very badmoment. And if I was almost going for my pistol, how much worse was itfor Craig, Klein and Miller, who hadn't been as friendly with Etl as Ihad been? Maybe we should have put our weapons out of our own reach,in preparation for this incident. Then there would have been no dangerof our using them.
But any freedom of action was swiftly wrested from us. The Martiansrolled over us in a wave. Thousands of dark tendrils with fine,sawlike spines latched onto our bodies. I was glad that I wore aspacesuit, as much from the revulsion I felt at a direct contact asfor the small protection it gave against injury.
* * *