Title: A Martian Odyssey
Author: Weinbaum, Stanley Grauman, 1902-1935
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "A Martian Odyssey" ***


Transcriber's Note:

This eBook was produced from the 1949 book _A Martian Odyssey and
Others_ by Stanley G. Weinbaum, pp. 1-27. Extensive research did not
uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was
renewed.



A MARTIAN ODYSSEY


Jarvis stretched himself as luxuriously as he could in the cramped
general quarters of the _Ares_.

"Air you can breathe!" he exulted. "It feels as thick as soup after the
thin stuff out there!" He nodded at the Martian landscape stretching
flat and desolate in the light of the nearer moon, beyond the glass of
the port.

The other three stared at him sympathetically--Putz, the engineer,
Leroy, the biologist, and Harrison, the astronomer and captain of the
expedition. Dick Jarvis was chemist of the famous crew, the _Ares_
expedition, first human beings to set foot on the mysterious neighbor of
the earth, the planet Mars. This, of course, was in the old days, less
than twenty years after the mad American Doheny perfected the atomic
blast at the cost of his life, and only a decade after the equally mad
Cardoza rode on it to the moon. They were true pioneers, these four of
the _Ares_. Except for a half-dozen moon expeditions and the ill-fated
de Lancey flight aimed at the seductive orb of Venus, they were the
first men to feel other gravity than earth's, and certainly the first
successful crew to leave the earth-moon system. And they deserved that
success when one considers the difficulties and discomforts--the months
spent in acclimatization chambers back on earth, learning to breathe the
air as tenuous as that of Mars, the challenging of the void in the tiny
rocket driven by the cranky reaction motors of the twenty-first century,
and mostly the facing of an absolutely unknown world.

Jarvis stretched and fingered the raw and peeling tip of his
frost-bitten nose. He sighed again contentedly.

"Well," exploded Harrison abruptly, "are we going to hear what happened?
You set out all shipshape in an auxiliary rocket, we don't get a peep
for ten days, and finally Putz here picks you out of a lunatic ant-heap
with a freak ostrich as your pal! Spill it, man!"

"Speel?" queried Leroy perplexedly. "Speel what?"

"He means '_spiel_'," explained Putz soberly. "It iss to tell."

Jarvis met Harrison's amused glance without the shadow of a smile.
"That's right, Karl," he said in grave agreement with Putz. "_Ich spiel
es!_" He grunted comfortably and began.

"According to orders," he said, "I watched Karl here take off toward the
North, and then I got into my flying sweat-box and headed South. You'll
remember, Cap--we had orders not to land, but just scout about for
points of interest. I set the two cameras clicking and buzzed along,
riding pretty high--about two thousand feet--for a couple of reasons.
First, it gave the cameras a greater field, and second, the under-jets
travel so far in this half-vacuum they call air here that they stir up
dust if you move low."

"We know all that from Putz," grunted Harrison. "I wish you'd saved the
films, though. They'd have paid the cost of this junket; remember how
the public mobbed the first moon pictures?"

"The films are safe," retorted Jarvis. "Well," he resumed, "as I said, I
buzzed along at a pretty good clip; just as we figured, the wings
haven't much lift in this air at less than a hundred miles per hour, and
even then I had to use the under-jets.

"So, with the speed and the altitude and the blurring caused by the
under-jets, the seeing wasn't any too good. I could see enough, though,
to distinguish that what I sailed over was just more of this grey plain
that we'd been examining the whole week since our landing--same blobby
growths and the same eternal carpet of crawling little plant-animals, or
biopods, as Leroy calls them. So I sailed along, calling back my
position every hour as instructed, and not knowing whether you heard
me."

"I did!" snapped Harrison.

"A hundred and fifty miles south," continued Jarvis imperturbably, "the
surface changed to a sort of low plateau, nothing but desert and
orange-tinted sand. I figured that we were right in our guess, then,
and this grey plain we dropped on was really the Mare Cimmerium which
would make my orange desert the region called Xanthus. If I were right,
I ought to hit another grey plain, the Mare Chronium in another couple
of hundred miles, and then another orange desert, Thyle I or II. And so
I did."

"Putz verified our position a week and a half ago!" grumbled the
captain. "Let's get to the point."

"Coming!" remarked Jarvis. "Twenty miles into Thyle--believe it or
not--I crossed a canal!"

"Putz photographed a hundred! Let's hear something new!"

"And did he also see a city?"

"Twenty of 'em, if you call those heaps of mud cities!"

"Well," observed Jarvis, "from here on I'll be telling a few things Putz
didn't see!" He rubbed his tingling nose, and continued. "I knew that I
had sixteen hours of daylight at this season, so eight hours--eight
hundred miles--from here, I decided to turn back. I was still over
Thyle, whether I or II I'm not sure, not more than twenty-five miles
into it. And right there, Putz's pet motor quit!"

"Quit? How?" Putz was solicitous.

"The atomic blast got weak. I started losing altitude right away, and
suddenly there I was with a thump right in the middle of Thyle! Smashed
my nose on the window, too!" He rubbed the injured member ruefully.

"Did you maybe try vashing der combustion chamber mit acid sulphuric?"
inquired Putz. "Sometimes der lead giffs a secondary radiation--"

"Naw!" said Jarvis disgustedly. "I wouldn't try that, of course--not
more than ten times! Besides, the bump flattened the landing gear and
busted off the under-jets. Suppose I got the thing working--what then?
Ten miles with the blast coming right out of the bottom and I'd have
melted the floor from under me!" He rubbed his nose again. "Lucky for me
a pound only weighs seven ounces here, or I'd have been mashed flat!"

"I could have fixed!" ejaculated the engineer. "I bet it vas not
serious."

"Probably not," agreed Jarvis sarcastically. "Only it wouldn't fly.
Nothing serious, but I had my choice of waiting to be picked up or
trying to walk back--eight hundred miles, and perhaps twenty days before
we had to leave! Forty miles a day! Well," he concluded, "I chose to
walk. Just as much chance of being picked up, and it kept me busy."

"We'd have found you," said Harrison.

"No doubt. Anyway, I rigged up a harness from some seat straps, and put
the water tank on my back, took a cartridge belt and revolver, and some
iron rations, and started out."

"Water tank!" exclaimed the little biologist, Leroy. "She weigh
one-quarter ton!"

"Wasn't full. Weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds earth-weight,
which is eighty-five here. Then, besides, my own personal two hundred
and ten pounds is only seventy on Mars, so, tank and all, I grossed a
hundred and fifty-five, or fifty-five pounds less than my everyday
earth-weight. I figured on that when I undertook the forty-mile daily
stroll. Oh--of course I took a thermo-skin sleeping bag for these wintry
Martian nights.

"Off I went, bouncing along pretty quickly. Eight hours of daylight
meant twenty miles or more. It got tiresome, of course--plugging along
over a soft sand desert with nothing to see, not even Leroy's crawling
biopods. But an hour or so brought me to the canal--just a dry ditch
about four hundred feet wide, and straight as a railroad on its own
company map.

"There'd been water in it sometime, though. The ditch was covered with
what looked like a nice green lawn. Only, as I approached, the lawn
moved out of my way!"

"Eh?" said Leroy.

"Yeah, it was a relative of your biopods. I caught one--a little
grass-like blade about as long as my finger, with two thin, stemmy
legs."

"He is where?" Leroy was eager.

"He is let go! I had to move, so I plowed along with the walking grass
opening in front and closing behind. And then I was out on the orange
desert of Thyle again.

"I plugged steadily along, cussing the sand that made going so tiresome,
and, incidentally, cussing that cranky motor of yours, Karl. It was just
before twilight that I reached the edge of Thyle, and looked down over
the gray Mare Chronium. And I knew there was seventy-five miles of
_that_ to be walked over, and then a couple of hundred miles of that
Xanthus desert, and about as much more Mare Cimmerium. Was I pleased? I
started cussing you fellows for not picking me up!"

"We were trying, you sap!" said Harrison.

"That didn't help. Well, I figured I might as well use what was left of
daylight in getting down the cliff that bounded Thyle. I found an easy
place, and down I went. Mare Chronium was just the same sort of place as
this--crazy leafless plants and a bunch of crawlers; I gave it a glance
and hauled out my sleeping bag. Up to that time, you know, I hadn't seen
anything worth worrying about on this half-dead world--nothing
dangerous, that is."

"Did you?" queried Harrison.

"_Did I!_ You'll hear about it when I come to it. Well, I was just about
to turn in when suddenly I heard the wildest sort of shenanigans!"

"Vot iss shenanigans?" inquired Putz.

"He says, 'Je ne sais quoi,'" explained Leroy. "It is to say, 'I don't
know what.'"

"That's right," agreed Jarvis. "I didn't know what, so I sneaked over to
find out. There was a racket like a flock of crows eating a bunch of
canaries--whistles, cackles, caws, trills, and what have you. I rounded
a clump of stumps, and there was Tweel!"

"Tweel?" said Harrison, and "Tveel?" said Leroy and Putz.

"That freak ostrich," explained the narrator. "At least, Tweel is as
near as I can pronounce it without sputtering. He called it something
like 'Trrrweerrlll.'"

"What was he doing?" asked the Captain.

"He was being eaten! And squealing, of course, as any one would."

"Eaten! By what?"

"I found out later. All I could see then was a bunch of black ropy arms
tangled around what looked like, as Putz described it to you, an
ostrich. I wasn't going to interfere, naturally; if both creatures were
dangerous, I'd have one less to worry about.

"But the bird-like thing was putting up a good battle, dealing vicious
blows with an eighteen-inch beak, between screeches. And besides, I
caught a glimpse or two of what was on the end of those arms!" Jarvis
shuddered. "But the clincher was when I noticed a little black bag or
case hung about the neck of the bird-thing! It was intelligent! That or
tame, I assumed. Anyway, it clinched my decision. I pulled out my
automatic and fired into what I could see of its antagonist.

"There was a flurry of tentacles and a spurt of black corruption, and
then the thing, with a disgusting sucking noise, pulled itself and its
arms into a hole in the ground. The other let out a series of clacks,
staggered around on legs about as thick as golf sticks, and turned
suddenly to face me. I held my weapon ready, and the two of us stared at
each other.

"The Martian wasn't a bird, really. It wasn't even bird-like, except
just at first glance. It had a beak all right, and a few feathery
appendages, but the beak wasn't really a beak. It was somewhat flexible;
I could see the tip bend slowly from side to side; it was almost like a
cross between a beak and a trunk. It had four-toed feet, and four
fingered things--hands, you'd have to call them, and a little roundish
body, and a long neck ending in a tiny head--and that beak. It stood an
inch or so taller than I, and--well, Putz saw it!"

The engineer nodded. "_Ja!_ I saw!"

Jarvis continued. "So--we stared at each other. Finally the creature
went into a series of clackings and twitterings and held out its hands
toward me, empty. I took that as a gesture of friendship."

"Perhaps," suggested Harrison, "it looked at that nose of yours and
thought you were its brother!"

"Huh! You can be funny without talking! Anyway, I put up my gun and said
'Aw, don't mention it,' or something of the sort, and the thing came
over and we were pals.

"By that time, the sun was pretty low and I knew that I'd better build a
fire or get into my thermo-skin. I decided on the fire. I picked a spot
at the base of the Thyle cliff, where the rock could reflect a little
heat on my back. I started breaking off chunks of this desiccated
Martian vegetation, and my companion caught the idea and brought in an
armful. I reached for a match, but the Martian fished into his pouch and
brought out something that looked like a glowing coal; one touch of it,
and the fire was blazing--and you all know what a job we have starting a
fire in this atmosphere!

"And that bag of his!" continued the narrator. "That was a manufactured
article, my friends; press an end and she popped open--press the middle
and she sealed so perfectly you couldn't see the line. Better than
zippers.

"Well, we stared at the fire a while and I decided to attempt some sort
of communication with the Martian. I pointed at myself and said 'Dick';
he caught the drift immediately, stretched a bony claw at me and
repeated 'Tick.' Then I pointed at him, and he gave that whistle I
called Tweel; I can't imitate his accent. Things were going smoothly; to
emphasize the names, I repeated 'Dick,' and then, pointing at him,
'Tweel.'

"There we stuck! He gave some clacks that sounded negative, and said
something like 'P-p-p-proot.' And that was just the beginning; I was
always 'Tick,' but as for him--part of the time he was 'Tweel,' and part
of the time he was 'P-p-p-proot,' and part of the time he was sixteen
other noises!

"We just couldn't connect. I tried 'rock,' and I tried 'star,' and
'tree,' and 'fire,' and Lord knows what else, and try as I would, I
couldn't get a single word! Nothing was the same for two successive
minutes, and if that's a language, I'm an alchemist! Finally I gave it
up and called him Tweel, and that seemed to do.

"But Tweel hung on to some of my words. He remembered a couple of them,
which I suppose is a great achievement if you're used to a language you
have to make up as you go along. But I couldn't get the hang of his
talk; either I missed some subtle point or we just didn't _think_
alike--and I rather believe the latter view.

"I've other reasons for believing that. After a while I gave up the
language business, and tried mathematics. I scratched two plus two
equals four on the ground, and demonstrated it with pebbles. Again Tweel
caught the idea, and informed me that three plus three equals six. Once
more we seemed to be getting somewhere.

"So, knowing that Tweel had at least a grammar school education, I drew
a circle for the sun, pointing first at it, and then at the last glow of
the sun. Then I sketched in Mercury, and Venus, and Mother Earth, and
Mars, and finally, pointing to Mars, I swept my hand around in a sort of
inclusive gesture to indicate that Mars was our current environment. I
was working up to putting over the idea that my home was on the earth.

"Tweel understood my diagram all right. He poked his beak at it, and
with a great deal of trilling and clucking, he added Deimos and Phobos
to Mars, and then sketched in the earth's moon!

"Do you see what that proves? It proves that Tweel's race uses
telescopes--that they're civilized!"

"Does not!" snapped Harrison. "The moon is visible from here as a fifth
magnitude star. They could see its revolution with the naked eye."

"The moon, yes!" said Jarvis. "You've missed my point. Mercury isn't
visible! And Tweel knew of Mercury because he placed the Moon at the
_third_ planet, not the second. If he didn't know Mercury, he'd put the
earth second, and Mars third, instead of fourth! See?"

"Humph!" said Harrison.

"Anyway," proceeded Jarvis, "I went on with my lesson. Things were going
smoothly, and it looked as if I could put the idea over. I pointed at
the earth on my diagram, and then at myself, and then, to clinch it, I
pointed to myself and then to the earth itself shining bright green
almost at the zenith.

"Tweel set up such an excited clacking that I was certain he understood.
He jumped up and down, and suddenly he pointed at himself and then at
the sky, and then at himself and at the sky again. He pointed at his
middle and then at Arcturus, at his head and then at Spica, at his feet
and then at half a dozen stars, while I just gaped at him. Then, all of
a sudden, he gave a tremendous leap. Man, what a hop! He shot straight
up into the starlight, seventy-five feet if an inch! I saw him
silhouetted against the sky, saw him turn and come down at me head
first, and land smack on his beak like a javelin! There he stuck square
in the center of my sun-circle in the sand--a bull's eye!"

"Nuts!" observed the captain. "Plain nuts!"

"That's what I thought, too! I just stared at him open-mouthed while he
pulled his head out of the sand and stood up. Then I figured he'd missed
my point, and I went through the whole blamed rigamarole again, and it
ended the same way, with Tweel on his nose in the middle of my picture!"

"Maybe it's a religious rite," suggested Harrison.

"Maybe," said Jarvis dubiously. "Well, there we were. We could exchange
ideas up to a certain point, and then--blooey! Something in us was
different, unrelated; I don't doubt that Tweel thought me just as screwy
as I thought him. Our minds simply looked at the world from different
viewpoints, and perhaps his viewpoint is as true as ours. But--we
couldn't get together, that's all. Yet, in spite of all difficulties, I
_liked_ Tweel, and I have a queer certainty that he liked me."

"Nuts!" repeated the captain. "Just daffy!"

"Yeah? Wait and see. A couple of times I've thought that perhaps we--"
He paused, and then resumed his narrative. "Anyway, I finally gave it
up, and got into my thermo-skin to sleep. The fire hadn't kept me any
too warm, but that damned sleeping bag did. Got stuffy five minutes
after I closed myself in. I opened it a little and bingo! Some
eighty-below-zero air hit my nose, and that's when I got this pleasant
little frostbite to add to the bump I acquired during the crash of my
rocket.

"I don't know what Tweel made of my sleeping. He sat around, but when I
woke up, he was gone. I'd just crawled out of my bag, though, when I
heard some twittering, and there he came, sailing down from that
three-story Thyle cliff to alight on his beak beside me. I pointed to
myself and toward the north, and he pointed at himself and toward the
south, but when I loaded up and started away, he came along.

"Man, how he traveled! A hundred and fifty feet at a jump, sailing
through the air stretched out like a spear, and landing on his beak. He
seemed surprised at my plodding, but after a few moments he fell in
beside me, only every few minutes he'd go into one of his leaps, and
stick his nose into the sand a block ahead of me. Then he'd come
shooting back at me; it made me nervous at first to see that beak of his
coming at me like a spear, but he always ended in the sand at my side.

"So the two of us plugged along across the Mare Chronium. Same sort of
place as this--same crazy plants and same little green biopods growing
in the sand, or crawling out of your way. We talked--not that we
understood each other, you know, but just for company. I sang songs, and
I suspect Tweel did too; at least, some of his trillings and twitterings
had a subtle sort of rhythm.

"Then, for variety, Tweel would display his smattering of English words.
He'd point to an outcropping and say 'rock,' and point to a pebble and
say it again; or he'd touch my arm and say 'Tick,' and then repeat it.
He seemed terrifically amused that the same word meant the same thing
twice in succession, or that the same word could apply to two different
objects. It set me wondering if perhaps his language wasn't like the
primitive speech of some earth people--you know, Captain, like the
Negritoes, for instance, who haven't any generic words. No word for food
or water or man--words for good food and bad food, or rain water and sea
water, or strong man and weak man--but no names for general classes.
They're too primitive to understand that rain water and sea water are
just different aspects of the same thing. But that wasn't the case with
Tweel; it was just that we were somehow mysteriously different--our
minds were alien to each other. And yet--we _liked_ each other!"

"Looney, that's all," remarked Harrison. "That's why you two were so
fond of each other."

"Well, I like _you_!" countered Jarvis wickedly. "Anyway," he resumed,
"don't get the idea that there was anything screwy about Tweel. In fact,
I'm not so sure but that he couldn't teach our highly praised human
intelligence a trick or two. Oh, he wasn't an intellectual superman, I
guess; but don't overlook the point that he managed to understand a
little of my mental workings, and I never even got a glimmering of his."

"Because he didn't have any!" suggested the captain, while Putz and
Leroy blinked attentively.

"You can judge of that when I'm through," said Jarvis. "Well, we plugged
along across the Mare Chronium all that day, and all the next. Mare
Chronium--Sea of Time! Say, I was willing to agree with Schiaparelli's
name by the end of that march! Just that grey, endless plain of weird
plants, and never a sign of any other life. It was so monotonous that I
was even glad to see the desert of Xanthus toward the evening of the
second day.

"I was fair worn out, but Tweel seemed as fresh as ever, for all I never
saw him drink or eat. I think he could have crossed the Mare Chronium in
a couple of hours with those block-long nose dives of his, but he stuck
along with me. I offered him some water once or twice; he took the cup
from me and sucked the liquid into his beak, and then carefully squirted
it all back into the cup and gravely returned it.

"Just as we sighted Xanthus, or the cliffs that bounded it, one of those
nasty sand clouds blew along, not as bad as the one we had here, but
mean to travel against. I pulled the transparent flap of my thermo-skin
bag across my face and managed pretty well, and I noticed that Tweel
used some feathery appendages growing like a mustache at the base of his
beak to cover his nostrils, and some similar fuzz to shield his eyes."

"He is a desert creature!" ejaculated the little biologist, Leroy.

"Huh? Why?"

"He drink no water--he is adapt' for sand storm--"

"Proves nothing! There's not enough water to waste any where on this
desiccated pill called Mars. We'd call all of it desert on earth, you
know." He paused. "Anyway, after the sand storm blew over, a little wind
kept blowing in our faces, not strong enough to stir the sand. But
suddenly things came drifting along from the Xanthus cliffs--small,
transparent spheres, for all the world like glass tennis balls! But
light--they were almost light enough to float even in this thin
air--empty, too; at least, I cracked open a couple and nothing came out
but a bad smell. I asked Tweel about them, but all he said was 'No, no,
no,' which I took to mean that he knew nothing about them. So they went
bouncing by like tumbleweeds, or like soap bubbles, and we plugged on
toward Xanthus. Tweel pointed at one of the crystal balls once and said
'rock,' but I was too tired to argue with him. Later I discovered what
he meant.

"We came to the bottom of the Xanthus cliffs finally, when there wasn't
much daylight left. I decided to sleep on the plateau if possible;
anything dangerous, I reasoned, would be more likely to prowl through
the vegetation of the Mare Chronium than the sand of Xanthus. Not that
I'd seen a single sign of menace, except the rope-armed black thing that
had trapped Tweel, and apparently that didn't prowl at all, but lured
its victims within reach. It couldn't lure me while I slept, especially
as Tweel didn't seem to sleep at all, but simply sat patiently around
all night. I wondered how the creature had managed to trap Tweel, but
there wasn't any way of asking him. I found that out too, later; it's
devilish!

"However, we were ambling around the base of the Xanthus barrier looking
for an easy spot to climb. At least, I was. Tweel could have leaped it
easily, for the cliffs were lower than Thyle--perhaps sixty feet. I
found a place and started up, swearing at the water tank strapped to my
back--it didn't bother me except when climbing--and suddenly I heard a
sound that I thought I recognized!

"You know how deceptive sounds are in this thin air. A shot sounds like
the pop of a cork. But this sound was the drone of a rocket, and sure
enough, there went our second auxiliary about ten miles to westward,
between me and the sunset!"

"Vas me!" said Putz. "I hunt for you."

"Yeah; I knew that, but what good did it do me? I hung on to the cliff
and yelled and waved with one hand. Tweel saw it too, and set up a
trilling and twittering, leaping to the top of the barrier and then high
into the air. And while I watched, the machine droned on into the
shadows to the south.

"I scrambled to the top of the cliff. Tweel was still pointing and
trilling excitedly, shooting up toward the sky and coming down head-on
to stick upside down on his beak in the sand. I pointed toward the south
and at myself, and he said, 'Yes--Yes--Yes'; but somehow I gathered that
he thought the flying thing was a relative of mine, probably a parent.
Perhaps I did his intellect an injustice; I think now that I did.

"I was bitterly disappointed by the failure to attract attention. I
pulled out my thermo-skin bag and crawled into it, as the night chill
was already apparent. Tweel stuck his beak into the sand and drew up his
legs and arms and looked for all the world like one of those leafless
shrubs out there. I think he stayed that way all night."

"Protective mimicry!" ejaculated Leroy. "See? He is desert creature!"

"In the morning," resumed Jarvis, "we started off again. We hadn't gone
a hundred yards into Xanthus when I saw something queer! This is one
thing Putz didn't photograph, I'll wager!

"There was a line of little pyramids--tiny ones, not more than six
inches high, stretching across Xanthus as far as I could see! Little
buildings made of pygmy bricks, they were, hollow inside and truncated,
or at least broken at the top and empty. I pointed at them and said
'What?' to Tweel, but he gave some negative twitters to indicate, I
suppose, that he didn't know. So off we went, following the row of
pyramids because they ran north, and I was going north.

"Man, we trailed that line for hours! After a while, I noticed another
queer thing: they were getting larger. Same number of bricks in each
one, but the bricks were larger.

"By noon they were shoulder high. I looked into a couple--all just the
same, broken at the top and empty. I examined a brick or two as well;
they were silica, and old as creation itself!"

"How you know?" asked Leroy.

"They were weathered--edges rounded. Silica doesn't weather easily even
on earth, and in this climate--!"

"How old you think?"

"Fifty thousand--a hundred thousand years. How can I tell? The little
ones we saw in the morning were older--perhaps ten times as old.
Crumbling. How old would that make _them_? Half a million years? Who
knows?" Jarvis paused a moment. "Well," he resumed, "we followed the
line. Tweel pointed at them and said 'rock' once or twice, but he'd done
that many times before. Besides, he was more or less right about these.

"I tried questioning him. I pointed at a pyramid and asked 'People?' and
indicated the two of us. He set up a negative sort of clucking and said,
'No, no, no. No one-one-two. No two-two-four,' meanwhile rubbing his
stomach. I just stared at him and he went through the business again.
'No one-one-two. No two-two-four.' I just gaped at him."

"That proves it!" exclaimed Harrison. "Nuts!"

"You think so?" queried Jarvis sardonically. "Well, I figured it out
different! 'No one-one-two!' You don't get it, of course, do you?"

"Nope--nor do you!"

"I think I do! Tweel was using the few English words he knew to put over
a very complex idea. What, let me ask, does mathematics make you think
of?"

"Why--of astronomy. Or--or logic!"

"That's it! 'No one-one-two!' Tweel was telling me that the builders of
the pyramids weren't people--or that they weren't intelligent, that they
weren't reasoning creatures! Get it?"

"Huh! I'll be damned!"

"You probably will."

"Why," put in Leroy, "he rub his belly?"

"Why? Because, my dear biologist, that's where his brains are! Not in
his tiny head--in his middle!"

"_C'est_ impossible!"

"Not on Mars, it isn't! This flora and fauna aren't earthly; your
biopods prove that!" Jarvis grinned and took up his narrative. "Anyway,
we plugged along across Xanthus and in about the middle of the
afternoon, something else queer happened. The pyramids ended."

"Ended!"

"Yeah; the queer part was that the last one--and now they were
ten-footers--was capped! See? Whatever built it was still inside; we'd
trailed 'em from their half-million-year-old origin to the present.

"Tweel and I noticed it about the same time. I yanked out my automatic
(I had a clip of Boland explosive bullets in it) and Tweel, quick as a
sleight-of-hand trick, snapped a queer little glass revolver out of his
bag. It was much like our weapons, except that the grip was larger to
accommodate his four-taloned hand. And we held our weapons ready while
we sneaked up along the lines of empty pyramids.

"Tweel saw the movement first. The top tiers of bricks were heaving,
shaking, and suddenly slid down the sides with a thin crash. And
then--something--something was coming out!

"A long, silvery-grey arm appeared, dragging after it an armored body.
Armored, I mean, with scales, silver-grey and dull-shining. The arm
heaved the body out of the hole; the beast crashed to the sand.

"It was a nondescript creature--body like a big grey cask, arm and a
sort of mouth-hole at one end; stiff, pointed tail at the other--and
that's all. No other limbs, no eyes, ears, nose--nothing! The thing
dragged itself a few yards, inserted its pointed tail in the sand,
pushed itself upright, and just sat.

"Tweel and I watched it for ten minutes before it moved. Then, with a
creaking and rustling like--oh, like crumpling stiff paper--its arm
moved to the mouth-hole and out came a brick! The arm placed the brick
carefully on the ground, and the thing was still again.

"Another ten minutes--another brick. Just one of Nature's bricklayers.
I was about to slip away and move on when Tweel pointed at the thing and
said 'rock'! I went 'huh?' and he said it again. Then, to the
accompaniment of some of his trilling, he said, 'No--no--,' and gave two
or three whistling breaths.

"Well, I got his meaning, for a wonder! I said, 'No breath?' and
demonstrated the word. Tweel was ecstatic; he said, 'Yes, yes, yes! No,
no, no breet!' Then he gave a leap and sailed out to land on his nose
about one pace from the monster!

"I was startled, you can imagine! The arm was going up for a brick, and
I expected to see Tweel caught and mangled, but--nothing happened! Tweel
pounded on the creature, and the arm took the brick and placed it neatly
beside the first. Tweel rapped on its body again, and said 'rock,' and I
got up nerve enough to take a look myself.

"Tweel was right again. The creature was rock, and it didn't breathe!"

"How you know?" snapped Leroy, his black eyes blazing interest.

"Because I'm a chemist. The beast was made of silica! There must have
been pure silicon in the sand, and it lived on that. Get it? We, and
Tweel, and those plants out there, and even the biopods are _carbon_
life; this thing lived by a different set of chemical reactions. It was
silicon life!"

"_La vie silicieuse!_" shouted Leroy. "I have suspect, and now it is
proof! I must go see! _Il faut que je--_"

"All right! All right!" said Jarvis. "You can go see. Anyhow, there the
thing was, alive and yet not alive, moving every ten minutes, and then
only to remove a brick. Those bricks were its waste matter. See,
Frenchy? We're carbon, and our waste is carbon dioxide, and this thing
is silicon, and _its_ waste is silicon dioxide--silica. But silica is a
solid, hence the bricks. And it builds itself in, and when it is
covered, it moves over to a fresh place to start over. No wonder it
creaked! A living creature half a million years old!"

"How you know how old?" Leroy was frantic.

"We trailed its pyramids from the beginning, didn't we? If this weren't
the original pyramid builder, the series would have ended somewhere
before we found him, wouldn't it?--ended and started over with the small
ones. That's simple enough, isn't it?

"But he reproduces, or tries to. Before the third brick came out, there
was a little rustle and out popped a whole stream of those little
crystal balls. They're his spores, or eggs, or seeds--call 'em what you
want. They went bouncing by across Xanthus just as they'd bounced by us
back in the Mare Chronium. I've a hunch how they work, too--this is for
your information, Leroy. I think the crystal shell of silica is no more
than a protective covering, like an eggshell, and that the active
principle is the smell inside. It's some sort of gas that attacks
silicon, and if the shell is broken near a supply of that element, some
reaction starts that ultimately develops into a beast like that one."

"You should try!" exclaimed the little Frenchman. "We must break one to
see!"

"Yeah? Well, I did. I smashed a couple against the sand. Would you like
to come back in about ten thousand years to see if I planted some
pyramid monsters? You'd most likely be able to tell by that time!"
Jarvis paused and drew a deep breath. "Lord! That queer creature! Do you
picture it? Blind, deaf, nerveless, brainless--just a mechanism, and
yet--immortal! Bound to go on making bricks, building pyramids, as long
as silicon and oxygen exist, and even afterwards it'll just stop. It
won't be dead. If the accidents of a million years bring it its food
again, there it'll be, ready to run again, while brains and
civilizations are part of the past. A queer beast--yet I met a stranger
one!"

"If you did, it must have been in your dreams!" growled Harrison.

"You're right!" said Jarvis soberly. "In a way, you're right. The
dream-beast! That's the best name for it--and it's the most fiendish,
terrifying creation one could imagine! More dangerous than a lion, more
insidious than a snake!"

"Tell me!" begged Leroy. "I must go see!"

"Not _this_ devil!" He paused again. "Well," he resumed, "Tweel and I
left the pyramid creature and plowed along through Xanthus. I was tired
and a little disheartened by Putz's failure to pick me up, and Tweel's
trilling got on my nerves, as did his flying nosedives. So I just strode
along without a word, hour after hour across that monotonous desert.

"Toward mid-afternoon we came in sight of a low dark line on the
horizon. I knew what it was. It was a canal; I'd crossed it in the
rocket and it meant that we were just one-third of the way across
Xanthus. Pleasant thought, wasn't it? And still, I was keeping up to
schedule.

"We approached the canal slowly; I remembered that this one was bordered
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!"

"Laugh!" grumbled Jarvis. "I'd already had a nasty bump and a mean
frostbite on that nose. Anyway, I yelled 'Ouch!' and jumped aside and
the creature dashed away; but from then on, their greeting was 'We are
v-r-r-riends! Ouch!' Queer beasts!

"Tweel and I followed the road squarely up to the nearest mound. The
creatures were coming and going, paying us not the slightest attention,
fetching their loads of rubbish. The road simply dived into an opening,
and slanted down like an old mine, and in and out darted the
barrel-people, greeting us with their eternal phrase.

"I looked in; there was a light somewhere below, and I was curious to
see it. It didn't look like a flame or torch, you understand, but more
like a civilized light, and I thought that I might get some clue as to
the creatures' development. So in I went and Tweel tagged along, not
without a few trills and twitters, however.

"The light was curious; it sputtered and flared like an old arc light,
but came from a single black rod set in the wall of the corridor. It
was electric, beyond doubt. The creatures were fairly civilized,
apparently.

"Then I saw another light shining on something that glittered and I went
on to look at that, but it was only a heap of shiny sand. I turned
toward the entrance to leave, and the Devil take me if it wasn't gone!

"I suppose the corridor had curved, or I'd stepped into a side passage.
Anyway, I walked back in that direction I thought we'd come, and all I
saw was more dimlit corridor. The place was a labyrinth! There was
nothing but twisting passages running every way, lit by occasional
lights, and now and then a creature running by, sometimes with a
pushcart, sometimes without.

"Well, I wasn't much worried at first. Tweel and I had only come a few
steps from the entrance. But every move we made after that seemed to get
us in deeper. Finally I tried following one of the creatures with an
empty cart, thinking that he'd be going out for his rubbish, but he ran
around aimlessly, into one passage and out another. When he started
dashing around a pillar like one of these Japanese waltzing mice, I gave
up, dumped my water tank on the floor, and sat down.

"Tweel was as lost as I. I pointed up and he said 'No--no--no!' in a
sort of helpless trill. And we couldn't get any help from the natives.
They paid no attention at all, except to assure us they were
friends--ouch!

"Lord! I don't know how many hours or days we wandered around there! I
slept twice from sheer exhaustion; Tweel never seemed to need sleep. We
tried following only the upward corridors, but they'd run uphill a ways
and then curve downwards. The temperature in that damned ant hill was
constant; you couldn't tell night from day and after my first sleep I
didn't know whether I'd slept one hour or thirteen, so I couldn't tell
from my watch whether it was midnight or noon.

"We saw plenty of strange things. There were machines running in some of
the corridors, but they didn't seem to be doing anything--just wheels
turning. And several times I saw two barrel-beasts with a little one
growing between them, joined to both."

"Parthenogenesis!" exulted Leroy. "Parthenogenesis by budding like _les
tulipes_!"

"If you say so, Frenchy," agreed Jarvis. "The things never noticed us at
all, except, as I say, to greet us with 'We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!'
They seemed to have no home-life of any sort, but just scurried around
with their pushcarts, bringing in rubbish. And finally I discovered what
they did with it.

"We'd had a little luck with a corridor, one that slanted upwards for a
great distance. I was feeling that we ought to be close to the surface
when suddenly the passage debouched into a domed chamber, the only one
we'd seen. And man!--I felt like dancing when I saw what looked like
daylight through a crevice in the roof.

"There was a--a sort of machine in the chamber, just an enormous wheel
that turned slowly, and one of the creatures was in the act of dumping
his rubbish below it. The wheel ground it with a crunch--sand, stones,
plants, all into powder that sifted away somewhere. While we watched,
others filed in, repeating the process, and that seemed to be all. No
rhyme nor reason to the whole thing--but that's characteristic of this
crazy planet. And there was another fact that's almost too bizarre to
believe.

"One of the creatures, having dumped his load, pushed his cart aside
with a crash and calmly shoved himself under the wheel! I watched him
being crushed, too stupefied to make a sound, and a moment later,
another followed him! They were perfectly methodical about it, too; one
of the cartless creatures took the abandoned pushcart.

"Tweel didn't seem surprised; I pointed out the next suicide to him, and
he just gave the most human-like shrug imaginable, as much as to say,
'What can I do about it?' He must have known more or less about these
creatures.

"Then I saw something else. There was something beyond the wheel,
something shining on a sort of low pedestal. I walked over; there was a
little crystal about the size of an egg, fluorescing to beat Tophet. The
light from it stung my hands and face, almost like a static discharge,
and then I noticed another funny thing. Remember that wart I had on my
left thumb? Look!" Jarvis extended his hand. "It dried up and fell
off--just like that! And my abused nose--say, the pain went out of it
like magic! The thing had the property of hard x-rays or gamma
radiations, only more so; it destroyed diseased tissue and left healthy
tissue unharmed!

"I was thinking what a present _that'd_ be to take back to Mother Earth
when a lot of racket interrupted. We dashed back to the other side of
the wheel in time to see one of the pushcarts ground up. Some suicide
had been careless, it seems.

"Then suddenly the creatures were booming and drumming all around us and
their noise was decidedly menacing. A crowd of them advanced toward us;
we backed out of what I thought was the passage we'd entered by, and
they came rumbling after us, some pushing carts and some not. Crazy
brutes! There was a whole chorus of 'We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!' I
didn't like the 'ouch'; it was rather suggestive.

"Tweel had his glass gun out and I dumped my water tank for greater
freedom and got mine. We backed up the corridor with the barrel-beasts
following--about twenty of them. Queer thing--the ones coming in with
loaded carts moved past us inches away without a sign.

"Tweel must have noticed that. Suddenly, he snatched out that glowing
coal cigar-lighter of his and touched a cart-load of plant limbs. Puff!
The whole load was burning--and the crazy beast pushing it went right
along without a change of pace! It created some disturbance among our
'V-r-r-riends,' however--and then I noticed the smoke eddying and
swirling past us, and sure enough, there was the entrance!

"I grabbed Tweel and out we dashed and after us our twenty pursuers. The
daylight felt like Heaven, though I saw at first glance that the sun was
all but set, and that was bad, since I couldn't live outside my
thermo-skin bag in a Martian night--at least, without a fire.

"And things got worse in a hurry. They cornered us in an angle between
two mounds, and there we stood. I hadn't fired nor had Tweel; there
wasn't any use in irritating the brutes. They stopped a little distance
away and began their booming about friendship and ouches.

"Then things got still worse! A barrel-brute came out with a pushcart
and they all grabbed into it and came out with handfuls of foot-long
copper darts--sharp-looking ones--and all of a sudden one sailed past my
ear--zing! And it was shoot or die then.

"We were doing pretty well for a while. We picked off the ones next to
the pushcart and managed to keep the darts at a minimum, but suddenly
there was a thunderous booming of 'v-r-r-riends' and 'ouches,' and a
whole army of 'em came out of their hole.

"Man! We were through and I knew it! Then I realized that Tweel wasn't.
He could have leaped the mound behind us as easily as not. He was
staying for me!

"Say, I could have cried if there'd been time! I'd liked Tweel from the
first, but whether I'd have had gratitude to do what he was
doing--suppose I _had_ saved him from the first dream-beast--he'd done
as much for me, hadn't he? I grabbed his arm, and said 'Tweel,' and
pointed up, and he understood. He said, 'No--no--no, Tick!' and popped
away with his glass pistol.

"What could I do? I'd be a goner anyway when the sun set, but I couldn't
explain that to him. I said, 'Thanks, Tweel. You're a man!' and felt
that I wasn't paying him any compliment at all. A man! There are mighty
few men who'd do that.

"So I went 'bang' with my gun and Tweel went 'puff' with his, and the
barrels were throwing darts and getting ready to rush us, and booming
about being friends. I had given up hope. Then suddenly an angel dropped
right down from Heaven in the shape of Putz, with his under-jets
blasting the barrels into very small pieces!

"Wow! I let out a yell and dashed for the rocket; Putz opened the door
and in I went, laughing and crying and shouting! It was a moment or so
before I remembered Tweel; I looked around in time to see him rising in
one of his nosedives over the mound and away.

"I had a devil of a job arguing Putz into following! By the time we got
the rocket aloft, darkness was down; you know how it comes here--like
turning off a light. We sailed out over the desert and put down once or
twice. I yelled 'Tweel!' and yelled it a hundred times, I guess. We
couldn't find him; he could travel like the wind and all I got--or else
I imagined it--was a faint trilling and twittering drifting out of the
south. He'd gone, and damn it! I wish--I wish he hadn't!"

The four men of the _Ares_ were silent--even the sardonic Harrison. At
last little Leroy broke the stillness.

"I should like to see," he murmured.

"Yeah," said Harrison. "And the wart-cure. Too bad you missed that; it
might be the cancer cure they've been hunting for a century and a half."

"Oh, that!" muttered Jarvis gloomily. "That's what started the fight!"
He drew a glistening object from his pocket.

"Here it is."





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "A Martian Odyssey" ***

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