Boris Strugatsky - Noon - 22nd Century

When the sun had sunk toward the west and the sky in the east had turned from a whitish color to dark violet, they sat down to supper. The camp was ready. Three tents crossed the street, and the packs and boxes of equipment were neatly stacked along the wall of one of the buildings. Fokin, sighing, had cooked supper. Everyone was hungry, and consequently they did not wait for Ryu. From the camp they could see that Ryu was sitting on the roof of his laboratory, doing something with the antennas.

“Never mind—we’ll leave some for him,” Tanya promised.

“Go ahead,” said Fokin, starting to eat his boiled veal. “He’ll get hungry and he’ll come.”

“You picked the wrong place to put the helicopter, Gennady,” said Tanya. “It blocks off the whole view of the river.”

Everyone looked at the helicopter. It really did destroy the view.

“You get a fine river view from the roof,” Komov said calmly.

“No, really,” said Fokin, who was sitting with his back to the river. “There’s nothing tasteful around here to look at.”

“What do you mean nothing?” Komov said as calmly as before. “What about the veal?” He lay down on his back and started looking at the sky.

“Here’s what I’m thinking about,” Fokin retorted, wiping his mustache with a napkin. “How will we dig into these graves?” He tapped his finger against the nearest building. “Shall we go under, or cut into the wall?”

“That’s not quite the problem,” Komov said lazily. “How did the owners get in?— that’s the problem. Did they cut into the walls too?”

Fokin looked thoughtfully at Komov and asked, “And what in fact do you know about the owners? Maybe they didn’t need to get in there.”

“Uh-huh,” said Tanya. “A new architectural principle. Somebody sat down on the grass, put walls and a ceiling around himself, and… and…”

“And went away,” Mboga finished.

“Well, suppose they really are tombs?” Fokin insisted.

Everyone discussed this proposal for some time.

“Tatyana, what do the analyses say?” asked Komov.

“Limestone,” said Tanya. “Calcium carbonate. Plus many impurities, of course. You know what it’s like? Coral reefs. And the more so, since the building is made out of a single piece.”

“A monolith of natural origin.”

“Here we go again with that natural business!” cried Fokin. “It’s a scientific law: you have only to find new evidence of aliens, and immediately people appear to declare that it’s a natural formation.”

“It’s a natural proposition,” said Komov.

“Tomorrow we’ll put together the intravisor and have a look,” Tanya promised. “The main thing is that this limestone has nothing in common with the stuff that the city on Mars is built from. Or the amberine of the city on Vladislava.”

“So someone else is wandering among the planets,” said Komov. “It would be nice if this time they left us something a little more substantial.”

“If we could just find a library,” moaned Fokin. “Or some sort of machinery!”

They fell silent. Mboga got out a short pipe, and started filling it. He squatted, looking pensively over the tents into the bright sky. Under the white kerchief, his small face had a look of complete peace and satisfaction.

“It’s peaceful,” said Tanya.

Boom! Bang! Rat-tat-tat! came from the direction of the base.

“The devil!” muttered Fokin. “What in hell do we need that for?”

Mboga blew a smoke ring, and, watching it rise, said softly, “I understand, Boris. For the first time in my life I myself feel no joy in hearing our machines at work on an alien planet.”

“It’s somehow not alien, that’s the thing,” said Tanya.

A large black beetle flew in from somewhere or other, buzzing noisily, circled over the Pathfinders twice, and left. Fokin sniffed softly, and buried his nose in his bent elbow. Tanya got up and went into the tent. Komov got up too and stretched happily. It was so quiet and nice around that he was completely nonplussed when Mboga suddenly jumped up on his feet as if shot from a gun, and then froze, with his face turned toward the river. Komov turned his head in that direction too.

Some sort of enormous black hulk was moving toward the camp. The helicopter partly hid it, but they could see it sway as it walked, and could see the evening sun gleam on its moist shiny sides, which were puffed out like the belly of a hippopotamus. The hulk moved fairly rapidly, brushing aside the grass, and Komov saw with horror that the helicopter was swaying and had slowly started to tip over. Between the wall of a building and the belly of the helicopter a massive low forehead with two enormous bulges stuck out. Komov saw two small dull eyes, staring, as it seemed, straight at him. “Look out!” he yelled.

The helicopter tipped over, propping itself up in the grass on its rotor vanes. The monster kept moving toward the camp. It was no less than ten feet tall. Its striped sides rose and fell evenly, and they could hear measured, noisy breathing.

Behind Komov’s back, Mboga cocked the carbine with a click. Then Komov came to himself and backed toward the tent. Fokin scrambled quickly back on all fours, overtaking him. The monster was already just twenty paces away.

“Can you manage to break camp?” Mboga asked quickly.

“No,” answered Komov.

“Then I’m going to fire,” said Mboga.

“Wait a moment,” said Komov. He stepped forward, waved his arm, and shouted “Stop!”

For an instant the mountain of meat on the hoof did stop. The knobby forehead suddenly lifted up, and a mouth as capacious as a helicopter cabin, stuffed with green grass cud, gaped open.

“Gennady!” cried Tanya. “Get back at once!”

The monster emitted a prolonged screeching sound and moved forward even faster.

“Stop!” Komov shouted again, but now without much enthusiasm. “Evidently it’s herbivorous,” he stated, and moved back toward the tents.

He looked back. Mboga was standing with his carbine at his shoulder, and Tanya was already covering her ears. Next to Tanya stood Fokin, with a pack on his back. “Are you going to shoot at it today or not?” Fokin yelled in a strained voice. “It’ll make off with the intravisor or—”

Ka-thwak! Mboga’s semiautomatic hunting carbine was a .64 caliber, and the kinetic energy of the bullet at a distance of ten paces equaled nine tons. The bullet landed in the very center of the forehead between the two bulges. The monster sat down hard on its rear. Ka-thwak! The second bullet turned the monster over on its back. Its short fat legs moved convulsively through the air. A “ kh-h-a-a-a ” came from the thick grass. The black belly rose and fell, and then all was quiet. Mboga put the carbine down. “Let’s go have a look,” he said.

The monster was no smaller in size than an adult African elephant, but it more resembled a gigantic hippopotamus.

“Red blood,” said Fokin. “And what is this?” The monster lay on its side, and along its belly extended three rows of soft protuberances the size of a fist. A shiny thick liquid oozed from the growths. Mboga suddenly inhaled noisily, took a drop of liquid on the tip of a finger, and tasted it.

“Yuck!” said Fonin.

The same expression appeared on all their faces.

“Honey,” said Mboga.

“You don’t say!” exclaimed Komov. He hesitated, then also extended a finger. Tanya and Fokin watched his movements with disgust. “Real honey!” he exclaimed. “Lime-blossom honey!”

“Doctor Dickson had said that there are many saccharides in this grass,” said Mboga.

“A honey monster,” said Fokin. “Pity we did him in.”