Robert Silverberg: Mournful Monster

The explosion, when it came, seemed to fill the universe. A colossal boom unfolded behind him. The jungle heat rose to searing in-tensity for a moment. Marshall fell flat, shielding his head against metal fragments with his arms. He lay sprawled face-down in the thick vegetation, panting breathlessly, while fury raged a few hundred yards behind him. He did not look. He uttered a prayer of thankfulness for his lucky escape.

And then he realized he had very little to be thankful for. He was alive, true. But he was alive in the middle of a trackless jungle, with civilization a thousand miles away at the nearest. Desperately, he hoped that there had been other survivors.

He waited for a few minutes after the blast had subsided. Then he rose unsteadily. The ship was a charred ruin, a blistered hulk. Fragments of the fuselage lay scattered over a wide area. One had landed only a few dozen feet from where he lay.

He started to walk toward the wreckage.

Figures lay huddled in the grass. Marshall reached the first. He was a man in his fifties, heavy-set and balding, who was clambering to his feet. Marshall helped him up. The older man’s face was pale and sweat-beaded, and his lips were quivering. For a moment neither said anything.

Then Marshall said, in a voice that was surprisingly steady, “Come. We’d better look for other survivors.”

The second to be found was the girl in the violet dress. She was sitting upright, fighting to control her tears. Marshall felt a sudden surge of joy when he saw that she was still alive. She had not com-pletely escaped the fury of the blast, though; her dress was scorched, her eyebrows singed, the ends of her hair crisped. She seemed otherwise unharmed.

Not far from her lay two more people—a couple, who got shakily to their feet as Marshall approached them. Like the others, they were pale and close to the borderline of hysteria.

Five survivors. That was all. Marshall found six charred bodies near the plane—passengers who had succeeded in escaping from the ship, but who had been only a few feet away at the time of the blast. None of the bodies was recognizable. He turned away, slowly, shoulders slumping. Five survivors out of twenty. And they were lost in the heart of the jungle.

“We’re all that’s left,” he said in a quiet voice.

The girl in the violet dress—her beauty oddly enhanced by the tattered appearance of her clothing and the smudges of soot on her face—murmured, “It’s horrible! Going along so well—and in just a couple of moments—”

“It was an old plane,” muttered the older man bitterly. “An antique. It was criminal to let such a plane be used commercially.”

“Talking like that isn’t going to help us now,” said the remaining man, who stood close to his wife.

“Nothing’s going to help us now,” said the girl in the violet dress. “We’re in the middle of nowhere without any way of getting help. It would have been better to be blown up than to survive like this—”

“No,” Marshall said. He held up the small square box labelled SURVIVAL KIT. “Did any of you bring your survival kits out of the plane? No? Well, luckily, I grabbed up mine before I escaped. Maybe there’s something in here to help us.”

They crowded close around as he opened the kit. He called off the contents. “Water purifier….compass….a flare-gun and a couple of flares….a blaster with auxiliary charges….a handbook of survival techniques. That’s about it.”

“We’ll never make it,” the girl in the violet dress said softly. “A thousand miles back to Marleyville, a thousand miles ahead to New Lisbon. And no roads, no maps. We might as well use that blaster on ourselves.”

“No!” Marshall snapped. Staring at the stunned, defeated faces of the other four, he realized that he would have to assume the leadership of the little group. “We’re not giving up,” he said sharply. “We can’t let ourselves give up. We’re going ahead—ahead to New Lisbon!”

The first thing to do, Marshall thought, was to get organized. He led them a few hundred yards through the low underbrush, to the side of a small stream. Strange forest birds, angry over the sudden noisy invasion of their domain, cackled shrilly in the heavy-leaved trees above them. Marshall took a seat on a blunt boulder at the edge of the stream and said, “Now, then. We’re going to make a trek through this jungle and we’re going to reach New Lisbon alive. All clear?”

No one answered.

Marshall said, “Good. That means we all have to work together, if we’re going to survive. I hope you understand the meaning of cooperation. No bickering, no selfishness, no defeatism. Let’s get acquainted, first. My name is David Marshall. I’m from Earth. I’m a graduate student of anthropology—came to Loki to do anthropological research toward my doctorate in alien cultures.”

He glanced inquisitively at the girl in the violet dress. She said in a faltering voice, “My name is Lois Chalmers. I’m—I’m the daughter of the governor of the New Lisbon colony.”

Marshall’s eyes widened slightly. Governor Alfred Chalmers was one of the most important men in the entire Procyon system. Her presence here meant that there would surely be an attempt to find the survivors of the crash.

Marshall next looked toward the married couple. The man, who was short, thickset, and muscular, said, “I’m Clyde Garvey. This is my wife Estelle. We’re second-generation colonists at Marleyville. We were going to take a vacation in New Lisbon.”

The remaining member of the little band was the middle-aged man. He spoke now. “My name is Kyle, Nathan Kyle. I’m from Earth. I have large business investments on Loki, both at Marleyville and New Lisbon.”

“All right,” Marshall said. “We all know who everybody else is, now.” He looked up at the sky. It was mid-afternoon, and only the overhanging roof of leaves shielded the forest floor from the fiercely blazing sun. “We were just about at the halfway point of the trip when we crashed. That means it’s just as far to Marleyville as it is to New Lisbon. Probably we’re slightly closer to New Lisbon. We might as well head in that direction.”

“Maybe it’s better to stay right where we are,” Nathan Kyle suggested. “They’re certain to search for survivors. If we stay near the wreckage—”

“They could search this jungle for a hundred years and never cover the whole territory,” Marshall said. “Don’t forget that the only transcontinental plane on this world just crashed. All they have is a handful of short-range copters and light planes—not sufficient to venture this deep into the jungle. No; our only hope is to head for New Lisbon. Maybe when we get close enough, we’ll be spotted by a search-party.”

“What will we eat?” Estelle Garvey wanted to know.

“We’ll hunt the native wildlife,” Marshall told her. “And supplement that with edible vegetation. Don’t worry about the food angle.”

“How long will it take to reach New Lisbon?” Kyle asked.

Marshall shrugged. “We’ll march by day, camp by night. If we can average ten miles a day through the jungle, it’ll take about three months to reach safety.”

“Three months—!”

“I’m afraid so. But at least we’ll get there alive.”

“Nice to know you’re so confident, Marshall,” Kyle said bleakly. “Three months on foot through a jungle thick with all sorts of dangers—”

“Don’t give up before we’ve started,” Marshall said. He studied the survival kit compass for a moment, frowning. “We want to head due east. That way. If we start right away, we can probably cover five or six miles before nightfall. But let’s eat and freshen up first.”