Clifford Simak - Shadow Of Life

“To understand it you must think of all things as having a fourth dimension or fourth-dimensional possibilities, although all things do not have a fourth-dimensional sense. The Martians haven’t. Neither have the Earthmen. We can’t recognize the fourth dimension in actuality, although we can in theory.

“To become small, the Martians simply extended themselves in the direction of the fourth dimension. They lost mass in the fourth-dimensional direction, which reduced their size in the other three dimensions. To put it graphically, they took the greater part of themselves and shoved that greater part away where it wouldn’t bother them. They became subatomically small in the first three dimensions, extended their fourth dimension billions of times its original mass.”

Lathrop nodded slowly, thoughtfully. It was a novel idea — all things had a fourth dimension even if they didn’t know it, couldn’t know it, since they had no sense which would recognize the fourth dimension.

“Like stretching a rubber band,” said Carter. “It becomes longer but thinner. Its mass is increased in length, reduced in breadth and thickness.”

“Exactly,” said Elmer. “They reverse the process to become larger again, drawing mass from the fourth-dimensional direction.”

Silence fell, was broken by the soft whine of whirling metal. The entrance port of the spaceship, now grown to normal size, was opening.

The port fell smoothly back and a Martian waddled out. Lathrop stood rooted to the floor, felt the short hairs on the back of his neck stirring, struggling to arise as hackles.

The Martian waddled forward and stopped in front of them, his tentacles writhing gently. But when he spoke, he did not address the humans. He spoke to Elmer.

“You have shown them the jug?”

“I did not show it to them,” Elmer said. “They saved it for us. They killed an Evil One who masqueraded as a human. He would have stolen it, perhaps destroyed it. Lathrop recognized him.”

“I smelled him,” Lathrop said.

The Martian did not notice Lathrop or the others. It was as if they weren’t there, as if Lathrop hadn’t spoken.

“You have failed your duty,” the Martian said to Elmer.

“I am beyond duty,” Elmer replied. “I owe you nothing. I’m not even one of you. I’m just a shadow of those of you who have been. There are many times I do not think as you do. That’s because your thinking has out-stripped me and because I’m still living in the past and can’t understand some of the philosophy you hold today. A part of me must be always in the past, because the past accounts for all of me. For countless centuries I lived here with never a sign of recognition from you. It wasn’t until you needed me that you came out of your Universe to find me. You asked my help and I agreed. Agreed because the memories that make me up gave me racial pride, because I couldn’t let my own race down. And yet, in face of all that, you talk to me of duty.”

“The Earthmen,” said the Martian deliberately, “must die.”

“The Earthmen,” Lathrop declared, “don’t intend to die.”

Then, for the first time, the Martian faced him, stared at him with fish-bleak eyes. And Lathrop, staring back, felt slow, cold anger creep upon him. Anger at the arrogance, the insolence, the scarcely veiled belief that the Earth race was inferior, that some of its members must die because a Martian said they must. Arrogance that made the Martians believe they could conduct a crusade to bend the human race to the Martian way of thinking, use human beings to sell the race the dogma that had sent the Martians fleeing before a threat from the outer stars.

“I killed one of you before,” snapped Lathrop, “with my bare hands.”

It wasn’t what he would have liked to have said. It was even a childish thing to say.

Through his mind ran bits of history, snatched from the Earthian past — before space travel. Bits that told of the way inferior races had been propagandized and browbeaten into trends of thought by men who wouldn’t wipe their feet on them even while they sought to dictate their ways of life. And here it was again!

He would have liked to have told the Martian that, but it would have taken too long, maybe the Martian wouldn’t even understand.

“Where’s the robot?” asked the Martian.

“Yeah, where’s Buster?” yelped Alf. “I got a score to settle with that rattletrap. That’s why I came here. I swore I’d bust him down into a tinker toy and so help me—”

“Keep quiet, Alf,” said Carter. “Buster is a toy now. One that scoots along the floor.”

“Get going,” Lathrop told the Martian. “Buster isn’t here to help you.”

The Martian backed away. Lathrop sheered at him.

“Run, damn you, run! You’re good at that. You ran away from the things out on the stars. You ran away and hid.”

“It was the only thing to do,” the Martian’s thoughts were blubbery.

Lathrop whooped in sudden laughter. “You only think you hid. You’re like an ostrich sticking its head into the sand. You hid in three dimensions, yes, but you ran up a fourth-dimensional flag for all the Universe to see. Didn’t you realize, you fool, that the Evil Beings might have fourth-dimensional senses, that when you strung your fourth-dimensional selves all to hell and gone you were practically inviting them to come and get you?”

“It’s not true,” said the Martian smugly. “It couldn’t be true. We figured it all out. There is no chance for error. We are right.”

Lathrop spat in disgust. Disgust at something that was old and doddering and didn’t even know it.

The Martian sidled slowly away, then made a sudden dash, scooped up the Purple Jug, hugging it close against him.

“Stop him!” shrieked Elmer, and fear and terror rode up and down the shriek.

The Martian lunged for the open door of the spaceship, still hugging the jug. Lathrop hurled himself forward, flattening in a flying tackle. His hands fell short, scraped a leathery body, clawing fiercely, closed upon an elephantine leg. A tentacle spatted at his face, broke his grip upon the leg, sent him rolling on the floor.

Alf’s blaster crackled and the Martian moaned in high-pitched pain.

“Stop him! Stop him!” Elmer’s thoughts were sobbing now.

But there was no stopping him. The Martian already was in the ship, the port was swinging home.

Lathrop pulled himself to one knee, watched the port whirling, the ship already starting to grow small.

“There’s no use,” he said to Elmer.

“In a way,” said Carter, “that fellow is a hero. He’s throwing away his own life to save his race.”

“To save his race,” Lathrop echoed bitterly. “He can’t save his race. They’re lost already. They were lost the first time they did a thing and said that it was right, irrevocably right — that it couldn’t be wrong.”

“He can take his ship down into the sub-atomic,” argued Carter, “and then the jug will be subatomic, too. We’ll never find it. No one will ever find it. But he, himself, can’t get back into it. He’s barring himself from his own Universe.”

“It can be found,” said Lathrop. “It can be found no matter how small he makes it. Maybe it won’t even survive being pushed down into a state smaller than the subatomic, but if it does that only means the mass pushed into the fourth-dimensional direction will become longer or greater or whatever happens to mass in the fourth dimension. And that will make it all the easier for those chaps out on the stars to spot it.”

The ship was no bigger than the end of one’s finger when it rose into the air. In a moment it was a mote dancing in the light and then was gone entirely.

Carter stared at the space where it had been. “That’s that,” he said. “Now we fight alone.”