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A GIFT FOR TERRA
BY FOX B. HOLDEN
Illustrated by Paul Orban
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of ScienceFiction September 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _The good Martian Samaritans rescued Johnny Love and offeredhim "the stars". Now, maybe, Johnny didn't look closely enough into the"gift horse's" mouth, but there were others who did ... and foundtherein the answer to life...._]
His head hurt like blazes, but he was alive, and to be alive meantfighting like hell to stay that way.
That was the first thing returning consciousness told him. The next wasthat his helmet should have been cracked wide open when the bum landinghad wrenched the acceleration hammocks out of their suspension socketsand heaved his suited body across the buckled conning deck. It should'vebeen, but it wasn't.
The third thing he knew was that Ferris' helmet had been smashed into amillion pieces, and that Ferris was dead.
Sand sifted in a cold, red river through the gaping rent in the side ofthe ship, trying to bury him before he could stand up and get hisbalance on the crazily tilted deck. He shook loose with more strengththan he needed, gave the rest of the muscles in his blocky body a try,and there wasn't any hurt worse than a bruise. Funny. Ferris was dead.
He had a feeling somewhere at the edge of his brain that there was goingto be more to it than just checking his oxygen and food-concentratesupply and walking away from the ship. A man didn't complete the firstEarth-Mars flight ever made, smash his ship to hell, and then just walkaway from it. His astrogeologer-navigator was dead, and the planet wasdead, so a man just didn't walk away.
There was plenty of room for him to scramble through the yawning rip inthe buckled hullplates--just a matter of crawling up the river of redsand and out; it was as easy as that.
Then Johnny Love was on his feet again, and the sand clutched at hisheavy boots as though to keep him from leaving Ferris and the ship, butit didn't, and he was walking away....
* * * * *
Even one hundred and forty million miles from the Sun, the unfiltereddaylight was harsh and the reflection of it from the crimson sand hurthis eyes. The vault of the blue-black sky was too high; the desert plainwas too flat and too silent, and save for the thin Martian wind thatwhorled delicately-fluted traceries in the low dunes that were the onlyinterruption in the flatness, there was no motion, and the planet wastoo still.
Johnny Love stopped his walking. Even in the lesser gravity, it seemedtoo great an effort to place one booted foot before the other. He lookedback, and the plume of still-rising smoke from the broken thing that hadbeen his ship was like a solid black pillar that had been hastily builtby some evil djinn.
How far had he walked; how long?
He turned his back on the glinting speck and made his legs move again,and there was the hollow sound of laughter in his helmet. Here he was,Johnny Love, the first Martian! and the last! Using the last of thestrength in his bruised body to go forward, when there was no forwardand no backward, no direction at all; breathing when there was nopurpose in breathing.
Why not shut off the valves now?
He was too tired for hysteria. Men had died alone before. _Alone, butnever without hope! And here there was no hope, for there was no life,and no man had ever lived where there was not life!_
But he had come to see, and he was seeing, and in the remaining hoursleft to him he would see what no man had seen in a half a million years.
Harrison and Janes or Lamson and Fowler would not be down for twentydays at the inside; that had been the time-table. Twenty days, twentyyears ... he heard himself laugh again. Time-table!
He and Ferris first. Then Harrison and Janes. Then Lamson and Fowler,all at twenty-day intervals. If all landed safely, they would useExploration Plan I, Condition Optimum. If only two crews made it down,Plan II; Condition Limited. And if only one made the 273-day journeyfrom the orbit of Terra--that would be Plan III; Condition Untenable,Return. The twenty-day interval idea had come from some Earth-boundswivel-chair genius who had probably never even set foot in a Satelliteoperations room. Somebody had impressed on him when he was young thategg-carrying was a safer mission with a multiplicity of baskets; it wascommon sense that if anything happened to Mars-I touching down, at leastit wouldn't happen to II and III at the same time.
Common sense, Johnny thought, and he laughed again. Space was notcommon, and it was not sensible. And nobody had ever taught it the rulesmen made.
He kept walking, seeing, thinking and breathing.
For a long time. He fell once or twice and picked himself up again towalk some more, and then he fell a final time, and did not get up. Redsand whispered over him, danced lightly, drifted....
* * * * *
The flat, wide-tracked vehicle swerved in a tight arc, throwing up lowruby-colored clouds on either side. Its engines throbbed a new note ofpower, and it scuttled in a straight line across the desert floor like afleck of shiny metal drawn by an unseen magnet. Behind it rose athinning monument of green-black smoke, and between its tracks was awavering line of indentations in the sand already half-obliterated bythe weight of their own shallow walls. But they became deeper as thevehicle raced ahead; and then at length they ended, and the vehiclehalted.
There was a mound of sand that the winds, in their caprice, would nothave made alone, for they sculptured in a freer symmetry. And thechild-like figures seemed to realize that at once.
With quick precision they levelled the mound and found Johnny Love. Theytook him into their vehicle, and deftly matched and replenished thewaning gas mixture in the cylindrical tanks on his back.
Then they drove away with him.
* * * * *
"Ferris?"
"Ferris was your astrogeologer-navigator. He died when you crashed."
"Harrison ... _Janes_?"
"Harrison and Janes are not due for nine more days. But you are in nodanger."
There was darkness and warmth; his throat was dry and it burned. It washard to talk, and Ferris was dead. Harrison and Janes were not due fornine more days. Somebody said so. Nine more days and then everythingwould be--
Panic shook him, sent blood throbbing to his head and broughtconsciousness back hard. His eyes opened and he was suddenly sittingbolt upright.
"But Lamson, you were twenty days behind--" And the racing thought frozesolid in his fumbling brain. Then there was a torrent of thoughts andmemory overran them, buried them, and red desert was rushing up toengulf him. He screamed and fell back with his hands clawing at hiseyes.
"You are in no danger. You had thought our planet lifeless; it was anerror. We live underground, John Love. That is why you did not see us,or surface indications of our existence. A group of us speak yourlanguage, because for eleven days we have been studying your brain andanalyzing your thought-patterns."
Johnny was bolt upright again, and now his eyes were wide and his handswere knotted, and where there had been only light and shadow beforethere was full sight now. Swiftly he was off the low cot and on his feetlooking for the speaker, arms ready to lash out and hit.
But he was alone in the small, sterile-looking chamber, and his muscleswere so much excess baggage. He tried to recover his balance: he hadforgotten about the slight gravity. He tried too hard, and his bodycrashed, confused, into a wall. A--damn them, a _padded_ wall!
He regained his feet. Stood still, and raced his eye
s about him. Thereit was--above the cot. A small round, shuttered opening--some sort oftwo-way communication system. He wondered if they could see him, too. Ifthey could, that part of it worked only one way.
"All right, whoever you are, so you've analyzed me!" He had to directhis sudden anger at something, so he shouted at the shuttered aperture."Now what...."
There was silence for a tiny eternity, and he could feel them probing,evaluating him, as a human scientist would study a rare species in acage. The feeling ignited a new anger in him, and made him want to cursethe teachings that had conditioned his lifetime of thinking to thebelief that Man _was_ more than an animal.
He'd been sold short....
"Damn you! God damn you, what are you going to do to me?"
In a corner of his mind he was aware of a gentle hissing sound, but hedid not listen. The fear and terror had to be broken. Make them tell,_make_ them tell....
His muscles grew heavy and his face was feverish with his effort, andhis eyes stung. Something ...