A Martian Odyssey
by a wide fringe of vegetation and that Mud-heap City was on it.
"I was tired, as I said. I kept thinking of a good hot meal, and then
from that I jumped to reflections of how nice and home-like even Borneo
would seem after this crazy planet, and from that, to thoughts of little
old New York, and then to thinking about a girl I know there--Fancy
Long. Know her?"
"Vision entertainer," said Harrison. "I've tuned her in. Nice
blonde--dances and sings on the _Yerba Mate_ hour."
"That's her," said Jarvis ungrammatically. "I know her pretty well--just
friends, get me?--though she came down to see us off in the _Ares_.
Well, I was thinking about her, feeling pretty lonesome, and all the
time we were approaching that line of rubbery plants.
"And then--I said, 'What 'n Hell!' and stared. And there she was--Fancy
Long, standing plain as day under one of those crack-brained trees, and
smiling and waving just the way I remembered her when we left!"
"Now you're nuts, too!" observed the captain.
"Boy, I almost agreed with you! I stared and pinched myself and closed
my eyes and then stared again--and every time, there was Fancy Long
smiling and waving! Tweel saw something, too; he was trilling and
clucking away, but I scarcely heard him. I was bounding toward her over
the sand, too amazed even to ask myself questions.
"I wasn't twenty feet from her when Tweel caught me with one of his
flying leaps. He grabbed my arm, yelling, 'No--no--no!' in his squeaky
voice. I tried to shake him off--he was as light as if he were built of
bamboo--but he dug his claws in and yelled. And finally some sort of
sanity returned to me and I stopped less than ten feet from her. There
she stood, looking as solid as Putz's head!"
"Vot?" said the engineer.
"She smiled and waved, and waved and smiled, and I stood there dumb as
Leroy, while Tweel squeaked and chattered. I _knew_ it couldn't be real,
yet--there she was!
"Finally I said, 'Fancy! Fancy Long!' She just kept on smiling and
waving, but looking as real as if I hadn't left her thirty-seven million
miles away.
"Tweel had his glass pistol out, pointing it at her. I grabbed his arm,
but he tried to push me away. He pointed at her and said, 'No breet! No
breet!' and I understood that he meant that the Fancy Long thing wasn't
alive. Man, my head was whirling!
"Still, it gave me the jitters to see him pointing his weapon at her. I
don't know why I stood there watching him take careful aim, but I did.
Then he squeezed the handle of his weapon; there was a little puff of
steam, and Fancy Long was gone! And in her place was one of those
writhing, black, rope-armed horrors like the one I'd saved Tweel from!
"The dream-beast! I stood there dizzy, watching it die while Tweel
trilled and whistled. Finally he touched my arm, pointed at the twisting
thing, and said, 'You one-one-two, he one-one-two.' After he'd repeated
it eight or ten times, I got it. Do any of you?"
"_Oui!_" shrilled Leroy. "_Moi--je le comprends!_ He mean you think of
something, the beast he know, and you see it! _Un chien_--a hungry dog,
he would see the big bone with meat! Or smell it--not?"
"Right!" said Jarvis. "The dream-beast uses its victim's longings and
desires to trap its prey. The bird at nesting season would see its mate,
the fox, prowling for its own prey, would see a helpless rabbit!"
"How he do?" queried Leroy.
"How do I know? How does a snake back on earth charm a bird into its
very jaws? And aren't there deep-sea fish that lure their victims into
their mouths? Lord!" Jarvis shuddered. "Do you see how insidious the
monster is? We're warned now--but henceforth we can't trust even our
eyes. You might see me--I might see one of you--and back of it may be
nothing but another of those black horrors!"
"How'd your friend know?" asked the captain abruptly.
"Tweel? I wonder! Perhaps he was thinking of something that couldn't
possibly have interested me, and when I started to run, he realized
that I saw something different and was warned. Or perhaps the
dream-beast can only project a single vision, and Tweel saw what I
saw--or nothing. I couldn't ask him. But it's just another proof that
his intelligence is equal to ours or greater."
"He's daffy, I tell you!" said Harrison. "What makes you think his
intellect ranks with the human?"
"Plenty of things! First, the pyramid-beast. He hadn't seen one before;
he said as much. Yet he recognized it as a dead-alive automaton of
silicon."
"He could have heard of it," objected Harrison. "He lives around here,
you know."
"Well how about the language? I couldn't pick up a single idea of his
and he learned six or seven words of mine. And do you realize what
complex ideas he put over with no more than those six or seven words?
The pyramid-monster--the dream-beast! In a single phrase he told me that
one was a harmless automaton and the other a deadly hypnotist. What
about that?"
"Huh!" said the captain.
"_Huh_ if you wish! Could you have done it knowing only six words of
English? Could you go even further, as Tweel did, and tell me that
another creature was of a sort of intelligence so different from ours
that understanding was impossible--even more impossible than that
between Tweel and me?"
"Eh? What was that?"
"Later. The point I'm making is that Tweel and his race are worthy of
our friendship. Somewhere on Mars--and you'll find I'm right--is a
civilization and culture equal to ours, and maybe more than equal. And
communication is possible between them and us; Tweel proves that. It may
take years of patient trial, for their minds are alien, but less alien
than the next minds we encountered--if they _are_ minds."
"The next ones? What next ones?"
"The people of the mud cities along the canals." Jarvis frowned, then
resumed his narrative. "I thought the dream-beast and the
silicon-monster were the strangest beings conceivable, but I was wrong.
These creatures are still more alien, less understandable than either
and far less comprehensible than Tweel, with whom friendship is
possible, and even, by patience and concentration, the exchange of
ideas.
"Well," he continued, "we left the dream-beast dying, dragging itself
back into its hole, and we moved toward the canal. There was a carpet of
that queer walking-grass scampering out of our way, and when we reached
the bank, there was a yellow trickle of water flowing. The mound city
I'd noticed from the rocket was a mile or so to the right and I was
curious enough to want to take a look at it.
"It had seemed deserted from my previous glimpse of it, and if any
creatures were lurking in it--well, Tweel and I were both armed. And by
the way, that crystal weapon of Tweel's was an interesting device; I
took a look at it after the dream-beast episode. It fired a little glass
splinter, poisoned, I suppose, and I guess it held at least a hundred of
'em to a load. The propellent was steam--just plain steam!"
"Shteam!" echoed Putz. "From vot come, shteam?"
"From water, of course! You could see the water through the transparent
handle and about a gill of another liquid, thick and yellowish. When
Tweel squeezed the handle--there was no trigger--a drop of water and a
drop of the yellow stuff squirted into the firing chamber, and the water
vaporized--pop!--like that. It's not so difficult; I think we could
develop the same principle. Concentrated sulphuric acid will heat water
almost to boiling, and so will quicklime, and there's potassium and
sodium--
"Of course, his weapon hadn't the range of mine, but it wasn't so bad in
this thin air, and it _did_ hold as many shots as a cowboy's gun in a
Western movie. It was effective, too, at least against Martian life; I
tried it out, aiming at one of the crazy plants, and darned if the plant
didn't wither up and fall apart! That's why I think the glass splinters
were poisoned.
"Anyway, we trudged along toward the mud-heap city and I began to wonder
whether the city builders dug the canals. I pointed to the city and then
at the canal, and Tweel said 'No--no--no!' and gestured toward the
south. I took it to mean that some other race had created the canal
system, perhaps Tweel's people. I don't know; maybe there's still
another intelligent race on the planet, or a dozen others. Mars is a
queer little world.
"A hundred yards from the city we crossed a sort of road--just a
hard-packed mud trail, and then, all of a sudden, along came one of the
mound builders!
"Man, talk about fantastic beings! It looked rather like a barrel
trotting along on four legs with four other arms or tentacles. It had no
head, just body and members and a row of eyes completely around it. The
top end of the barrel-body was a diaphragm stretched as tight as a drum
head, and that was all. It was pushing a little coppery cart and tore
right past us like the proverbial bat out of Hell. It didn't even notice
us, although I thought the eyes on my side shifted a little as it
passed.
"A moment later another came along, pushing another empty cart. Same
thing--it just scooted past us. Well, I wasn't going to be ignored by a
bunch of barrels playing train, so when the third one approached, I
planted myself in the way--ready to jump, of course, if the thing didn't
stop.
"But it did. It stopped and set up a sort of drumming from the diaphragm
on top. And I held out both hands and said, 'We are friends!' And what
do you suppose the thing did?"
"Said, 'Pleased to meet you,' I'll bet!" suggested Harrison.
"I couldn't have been more surprised if it had! It drummed on its
diaphragm, and then suddenly boomed out, 'We are v-r-r-riends!' and gave
its pushcart a vicious poke at me! I jumped aside, and away it went
while I stared dumbly after it.
"A minute later another one came hurrying along. This one didn't pause,
but simply drummed out, 'We are v-r-r-riends!' and scurried by. How did
it learn the phrase? Were all of the creatures in some sort of
communication with each other? Were they all parts of some central
organism? I don't know, though I think Tweel does.
"Anyway, the creatures went sailing past us, every one greeting
us with the same statement. It got to be funny; I never thought to
find so many friends on this God-forsaken ball! Finally I made a
puzzled gesture to Tweel; I guess he understood, for he said,
'One-one-two--yes!--two-two-four--no!' Get it?"
"Sure," said Harrison, "It's a Martian nursery rhyme."
"Yeah! Well, I was getting used to Tweel's symbolism, and I figured it
out this way. 'One-one-two--yes!' The creatures were intelligent.
'Two-two-four--no!' Their intelligence was not of our order, but
something different and beyond the logic of two and two is four. Maybe I
missed his meaning. Perhaps he meant that their minds were of low
degree, able to figure out the simple things--'One-one-two--yes!'--but
not more difficult things--'Two-two-four--no!' But I think from what we
saw later that he meant the other.
"After a few moments, the creatures came rushing back--first one, then
another. Their pushcarts were full of stones, sand, chunks of rubbery
plants, and such rubbish as that. They droned out their friendly
greeting, which didn't really sound so friendly, and dashed on. The
third one I assumed to be my first acquaintance and I decided to have
another chat with him. I stepped into his path again and waited.
"Up he came, booming out his 'We are v-r-r-riends' and stopped. I looked
at him; four or five of his eyes looked at me. He tried his password
again and gave a shove on his cart, but I stood firm. And then the--the
dashed creature reached out one of his arms, and two finger-like nippers
tweaked my nose!"
"Haw!" roared Harrison. "Maybe the things have a sense of beauty!"