‘What was it, actually?’ asked the older man.
‘Oh, I don’t say they’ve got that far. They’ve established that it was no meteor; but just what it really was still has them absolutely guessing. I’d got pretty curious by the time they decided to take it away, and after I’d talked big and waved my wartime status at them a bit, they consented to stretch a point and take me along, too. So you’d better grade this as confidential.
‘When we went over the thing carefully at the research place it appeared to be simply a solid ball of some metal on which there’s been no report issued as yet. But in one place there was a hole, quite smooth, about half an inch in diameter, which went straight in, roughly to the middle. Well, they scratched their heads about the best way to tackle it, and decided in the end to cut it in half and see what. So they rigged up an automatic sawing device in a pit and set it going, and we all retreated to a reasonable distance, just in case. Now they’re all a bit more puzzled than they were before.’
‘Why, what happened?’ Sally asked.
‘Well, nothing actually happened. When the saw ran free we switched off and went back, and there was the ball lying in neat halves. But they weren’t solid halves as we had expected. There was a solid metal rind about six inches thick, but then there was an inch or so of soft, fine dust, which has insulating qualities that seem to be interesting them quite a bit. Then inside a thinner metal wall was an odd formation of cells; more like a section of honeycomb than anything, only made of some flexible, rubbery material, and every one empty. Next a belt about two inches wide, divided into metal compartments this time, all considerably larger than the cells in the outer part, and crammed with all sorts of things – packs of minute tubes, things that look like tiny seeds, different sorts of powders that have spilled about when the thing came apart, and which nobody’s got around to examining properly yet, and finally a four-inch space in the middle separated into layers by dozens of paper-thin fins, and absolutely empty otherwise.
‘So there is the secret weapon – and if you can make anything of that lot, I’m sure they’ll be pleased to hear about it. Even the dust layer disappointed them by not being explosive. Now they’re asking one another what the hell such a thing could be remotely expected to do.’
‘That’s disappointing. It seemed so like a meteor – until it started sizzling,’ said Mr Fontain.
‘One of them has suggested that in a way it may be. A sort of artificial meteor,’ Graham said. ‘That’s a bit too fancy for the rest, though. They feel that if something could be sent across space at all, surely it would be something more intelligible.’
‘It would be exciting if it were,’ Sally said. ‘I mean, it would be such a much more hopeful thing than just another secret weapon – a sort of sign that perhaps one day we shall be able to do it ourselves …
‘Just think how wonderful it might be if we really could do that! Think of all the people who are sick to death of secret weapons, and wars, and cruelties setting out one day in a huge ship for a clean, new planet where we could start again. We’d be able to leave behind all the things that make this poor old world get boggier and boggier. All we’d want is a place where people could live, and work, and build, and be happy. If we could only start again somewhere else, what a lovely, lovely world we might –’ She stopped suddenly at the sound of a frenzied yapping outside. She jumped up as it changed to a long-drawn howl.
‘That’s Mitty!’ she said. ‘What on earth – ?’
The two men followed her out of the house.
‘Mitty! Mitty!’ she called, but there was no sign of the dog, nor sound from it now.
They made round to the left, where the sound had seemed to come from. Sally was the first to see the white patch lying in the grass beside the outhouse wall. She ran towards it, calling; but the patch did not move.
‘Oh, poor Mitty!’ she said. ‘I believe she’s dead!’
She went down on her knees beside the dog’s limp body.
‘She is!’ she said. ‘I wonder what –’ She broke off abruptly, and stood up. ‘Oh, something stung me! Oh, it hurts!’ She clutched at her leg, tears of anguish suddenly coming into her eyes.
‘What on earth – ?’ began her father, looking down at the dog. ‘What are all those things – ants?’
Graham bent down to look.
‘No, they’re not ants. I don’t know what they are.’
He picked one of the little creatures up and put it on the palm of his hand to look at it more closely.
‘Never seen anything like that before,’ he said.
Mr Fontain beside him, peered at it, too.
It was a queer-looking little thing, under a quarter of an inch long. Its body seemed to be an almost perfect hemisphere with the flat side below and the round top surface coloured pink, and as shiny as a ladybird’s wing-cases. It was insect-like, except that it stood on only four short legs. There was no clearly defined head; just two eyes set in the edge of the shiny dome. As they watched, it reared up on two of its legs, showing a pale, flat underside, with a mouth set just below the eyes. In its forelegs it seemed to be holding a bit of grass or thin wire.
Graham felt a sudden, searing pain in his hand.
‘Hell’s bells!’ he said, shaking it off. ‘The little brute certainly can sting. I don’t know what they are, but they’re nasty things to have around. Got a spray handy?’
‘There’s one in the scullery,’ Mr Fontain told him. He turned his attention to his daughter. ‘Better?’ he inquired.
‘Hurts like hell,’ Sally said, between her teeth.
‘Just hang on a minute till we’ve dealt with this, then we’ll have a look at it,’ he told her.
Graham hurried back with the spray in his hand. He cast around and discovered several hundreds of the little pink objects crawling towards the wall of the outhouse. He pumped a cloud of insecticide over them and watched while they slowed, waved feeble legs, and then lay still. He sprayed the locality a little more, to make sure.
‘That ought to fix ’em,’ he said. ‘Nasty, vicious little brutes. Never seen anything quite like them – I wonder what on earth they were?’
Survival
As the spaceport bus trundled unhurriedly over the mile or more of open field that separated the terminal buildings from the embarkation hoist, Mrs Feltham stared intently forward across the receding row of shoulders in front of her. The ship stood up on the plain like an isolated silver spire. Near its bow she could see the intense blue light which proclaimed it all but ready to take off. Among and around the great tailfins, dwarf vehicles and little dots of men moved in a fuss of final preparations. Mrs Feltham glared at the scene, at this moment loathing it and all the inventions of men, with a hard, hopeless hatred.
Presently she withdrew her gaze from the distance and focused it on the back of her son-in-law’s head, a yard in front of her. She hated him, too.
She turned, darting a swift glance at the face of her daughter in the seat beside her. Alice looked pale; her lips were firmly set, her eyes fixed straight ahead.
Mrs Feltham hesitated. Her glance returned to the spaceship. She decided on one last effort. Under cover of the bus noise she said:
‘Alice, darling, it’s not too late, even now, you know.’
The girl did not look at her. There was no sign that she had heard, save that her lips compressed a little more firmly. Then they parted.
‘Mother, please!’ she said.
But Mrs Feltham, once started, had to go on.
‘It’s for your own sake, darling. All you have to do is to say you’ve changed your mind.’
The girl held a protesting silence.
‘Nobody would blame you,’ Mrs Feltham persisted. ‘They’d not think a bit worse of you. After all, everybody knows that Mars is no place for –’
‘Mother, please stop it,’ interrupted the girl. The sharpness of her tone took Mrs Feltham aback for a moment. She hesitated. But time was growing too short to allow herself t
he luxury of offended dignity. She went on:
‘You’re not used to the sort of life you’ll have to live there, darling. Absolutely primitive. No kind of life for any woman. After all, dear, it is only a five-year appointment for David. I’m sure if he really loves you he’d rather know that you are safe here and waiting –’
The girl said, harshly:
‘We’ve been over all this before, Mother. I tell you it’s no good. I’m not a child. I’ve thought it out, and I’ve made up my mind.’
Mrs Feltham sat silent for some moments. The bus swayed on across the field, and the rocketship seemed to tower further into the sky.
‘If you had a child of your own –’ she said, half to herself. ‘– Well, I expect some day you will. Then you will begin to understand …’
‘I think it’s you who don’t understand,’ Alice said. ‘This is hard enough, anyway. You’re only making it harder for me.’
‘My darling, I love you. I gave birth to you. I’ve watched over you always and I know you. I know this can’t be the kind of life for you. If you were a hard, hoydenish kind of girl, well, perhaps – but you aren’t, darling. You know quite well you aren’t.’
‘Perhaps you don’t know me quite as well as you imagine you do, Mother.’
Mrs Feltham shook her head. She kept her eyes averted, boring jealousy into the back of her son-in-law’s head.
‘He’s taken you right away from me,’ she said dully.
‘That’s not true, Mother. It’s – well, I’m no longer a child. I’m a woman with a life of my own to live.’
‘ “Whither thou goest, I will go …” ’ said Mrs Feltham reflectively. ‘But that doesn’t really hold now, you know. It was all right for a tribe of nomads, but nowadays the wives of soldiers, sailors, pilots, spacemen –’
‘It’s more than that, Mother. You don’t understand. I must become adult and real to myself …’
The bus rolled to a stop, puny and toylike beside the ship that seemed too large ever to lift. The passengers got out and stood staring upwards along the shining side. Mr Feltham put his arms round his daughter. Alice clung to him, tears in her eyes. In an unsteady voice he murmured:
‘Good-bye, my dear. And all the luck there is.’
He released her, and shook hands with his son-in-law.
‘Keep her safe, David. She’s everything –’
‘I know. I will. Don’t you worry.’
Mrs Feltham kissed her daughter farewell, and forced herself to shake hands with her son-in-law.
A voice from the hoist called: ‘All passengers aboard, please!’
The doors of the hoist closed. Mr Feltham avoided his wife’s eyes. He put his arm round her waist, and led her back to the bus in silence.
As they made their way, in company with a dozen other vehicles, back to the shelter of the terminal, Mrs Feltham alternately dabbed her eyes with a wisp of white handkerchief and cast glances back at the spaceship standing tall, inert, and apparently deserted now. Her hand slid into her husband’s.
‘I can’t believe it even now,’ she said. ‘It’s so utterly unlike her. Would you ever have thought that our little Alice … ? Oh, why did she have to marry him … ?’ Her voice trailed to a whimper.
Her husband pressed her fingers, without speaking.
‘It wouldn’t be so surprising with some girls,’ she went on. ‘But Alice was always so quiet. I used to worry because she was so quiet – I mean in case she might become one of those timid bores. Do you remember how the other children used to call her Mouse?
‘And now this! Five years in that dreadful place! Oh, she’ll never stand it, Henry. I know she won’t, she’s not the type. Why didn’t you put your foot down, Henry? They’d have listened to you. You could have stopped it.’
Her husband sighed. ‘There are times when one can give advice, Miriam, though it’s scarcely ever popular, but what one must not do is to try to live other people’s lives for them. Alice is a woman now, with her own rights. Who am I to say what’s best for her?’
‘But you could have stopped her going.’
‘Perhaps – but I didn’t care for the price.’
She was silent for some seconds, then her fingers tightened on his hand.
‘Henry – Henry, I don’t think we shall ever see them again. I feel it.’
‘Come, come, dear. They’ll be back safe and sound, you’ll see.’
‘You don’t really believe that, Henry. You’re just trying to cheer me up. Oh, why, why must she go to that horrible place? She’s so young. She could have waited five years. Why is she so stubborn, so hard – not like my little Mouse at all?’
Her husband patted her hand reassuringly.
‘You must try to stop thinking of her as a child, Miriam. She’s not; she’s a woman now and if all our women were mice, it would be a poor outlook for our survival …’
The Navigating Officer of the s/r Falcon approached his captain.
‘The deviation, sir.’
Captain Winters took the piece of paper held out to him.
‘One point three six five degrees,’ he read out. ‘H’m. Not bad. Not at all bad, considering. South-east sector again. Why are nearly all deviations in the S.E. sector, I wonder, Mr Carter?’
‘Maybe they’ll find out when we’ve been at the game a bit longer, sir. Right now it’s just one of those things.’
‘Odd, all the same. Well, we’d better correct it before it gets any bigger.’
The Captain loosened the expanding book-rack in front of him and pulled out a set of tables. He consulted them and scribbled down the result.
‘Check, Mr Carter.’
The navigator compared the figures with the table, and approved.
‘Good. How’s she lying?’ asked the Captain.
‘Almost broadside, with a very slow roll, sir.’
‘You can handle it. I’ll observe visually. Align her and stabilize. Ten seconds on starboard laterals at force two. She should take about thirty minutes, twenty seconds to swing over, but we’ll watch that. Then neutralize with the port laterals at force two. Okay?’
‘Very good, sir.’ The Navigating Officer sat down in the control chair, and fastened the belt. He looked over the keys and switches carefully.
‘I’d better warn ’em. May be a bit of a jolt,’ said the Captain. He switched on the address system, and pulled the microphone bracket to him.
‘Attention all! Attention all! We are about to correct course. There will be several impulses. None of them will be violent, but all fragile objects should be secured, and you are advised to seat yourselves and use the safety-belts. The operation will take approximately half an hour and will start in five minutes from now. I shall inform you when it has been completed. That is all.’ He switched off.
‘Some fool always thinks the ship’s been holed by a meteor if you don’t spoon it out,’ he added. ‘Have that woman in hysterics, most likely. Doesn’t do any good.’ He pondered idly. ‘I wonder what the devil she thinks she’s doing out here, anyway. A quiet little thing like that; what she ought to be doing is sitting in some village back home, knitting.’
‘She knits here,’ observed the Navigating Officer.
‘I know – and think what it implies! What’s the idea of that kind going to Mars? She’ll be as homesick as hell, and hate every foot of the place on sight. That husband of hers ought to have had more sense. Comes damn near cruelty to children.’
‘It mightn’t be his fault, sir. I mean, some of those quiet ones can be amazingly stubborn.’
The captain eyed his officer speculatively.
‘Well, I’m not a man of wide experience, but I know what I’d say to my wife if she thought of coming along.’
‘But you can’t have a proper ding-dong with those quiet ones, sir. They kind of featherbed the whole thing, and then get their own way in the end.’
‘I’ll overlook the implication of the first part of that remark, Mr Carter, but out of this extensive knowle
dge of women can you suggest to me why the devil she is here if he didn’t drag her along? It isn’t as if Mars were domestically hazardous, like a convention.’
‘Well, sir – she strikes me as the devoted type. Scared of her own shadow ordinarily, but with an awful amount of determination when the right string’s pulled. It’s sort of – well, you’ve heard of ewes facing lions in defence of their cubs, haven’t you?’
‘Assuming that you mean lambs,’ said the Captain, ‘the answers would be, A: I’ve always doubted it; and, B: she doesn’t have any.’
‘I was just trying to indicate the type, sir.’
The Captain scratched his cheek with his forefinger.
‘You may be right, but I know if I were going to take a wife to Mars, which heaven forbid, I’d feel a tough, gun-toting Momma was less of a liability. What’s his job there?’
‘Taking charge of a mining company office, I think.’
‘Office hours, huh? Well, maybe it’ll work out some way, but I still say the poor little thing ought to be in her own kitchen. She’ll spend half the time scared to death, and the rest of it pining for home comforts.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘They’ve had enough time to batten down the chamber-pots now. Let’s get busy.’
He fastened his own safety-belt, swung the screen in front of him on its pivot, switching it on as he did so, and leaned back watching the panorama of stars move slowly across it.
‘All set, Mr Carter?’
The Navigating Officer switched on a fuel line, and poised his right hand above a key.
‘All set, sir.’
‘Okay. Straighten her up.’
The Navigating Officer glued his attention to the pointers before him. He tapped the key beneath his fingers experimentally. Nothing happened. A slight double furrow appeared between his brows. He tapped again. Still there was no response.
‘Get on with it, man,’ said the Captain irritably.
The Navigating Officer decided to try twisting her the other way. He tapped one of the keys under his left hand. This time there was response without delay. The whole ship jumped violently sideways and trembled. A crash jangled back and forth through the metal members around them like a diminishing echo.