Harry Harrison - The Daleth Effect

“Look at that yard donkey,” Nils said. “Leaking steam and oil from every joint—and still dragging trains off the ferry. Do you know how old it is?” Martha apparently did not know, nor did she appear too interested in the answer.

“I’ll tell you. It’s on that plate on the side of the cab. Eighteen ninety-two that antique was built, and still on the job. We Danes never throw anything away while it still works. A very practical people.”

“As opposed to we Americans who build cars and things to break down at once and be discarded?”

He did not answer, but drove past the station and turned down Jernbanevej to the post office at the rear of the terminal. He parked and she got out, carrying the small package. Film. He wondered how long she had had it in the camera. She certainly had not taken any pictures since this holiday began. Some holiday. Bitchy, he thought, during my entire leave. He wondered what could possibly be bothering her; he could think of nothing. He saw that he had parked next to a hot dog stand, and his stomach gave an interested rumble at the sight. They would be sure to have a late lunch and he ought to be prepared. He went in and ordered two of them—raw onion, ketchup and mustard—then canceled the onion when he remembered that they would be at the launching with all the politicians and bigwigs. He had to remember this place; they had beer too, so he washed the polser down with a cold bottle of Tuborg Gold.

What was the matter with Martha? She was not unresponsive, but there was a coldness that made her roll away from him in bed at night. Perhaps it was the tension of the Moon flights, the sabotage and all that. You never could tell about women. Funny damn creatures. Given to moods. He saw her coming out of the post office and hurriedly finished the beer.

Nils never had a moment of doubt. Nor had he once, ever since that Sunday afternoon, ever even thought about Inger.

It was almost noon, so that here on the equator, at midsummer, the temperature had shot up to almost 30 degrees below freezing. The hill, realty one flank of a great circular crater, rose up sharply from the plain. A much shrunken sun glared down on the frozen landscape from a black sky, where the brightest stars could be easily seen. Only at the horizon was the atmosphere dense enough to trace a thin line of blue against the sky. The air was still, with a timeless silence, so thin, almost pure carbon dioxide, that it was almost not air at all. And very, very cold.

The two men climbing the steep slope had hard going despite the lower gravity. Their heavily insulated, electrically heated clothing hampered their movements; their battery packs and oxygen tanks weighed them down. When they reached the crest they stopped, gratefully, to rest. Their features were hidden by their masks and goggles.

“That’s quite a climb,” Arnie said, gasping for breath.

No expression could be seen on Nils’s shrouded face, but his voice was worried. “I hope it wasn’t too much. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you?”

“Fine. Just out of breath. And out of shape. It has been too long since I have done anything like this. But it is worth it, really, a simply magnificent sight”

The silent landscape reduced them, too, to silence. Chill, dark, alien, a planet that had not died because it had never been born. The tiny settlement below was like a welcoming light in a window, a single touch of warmth in the eternal cold of Mars. Arnie looked around—then stepper quickly aside, beckoning Nils after him.

“Is anything wrong?” Nils asked.

“No, not at all. We were just standing between the sun and this Mars-kdl. It is starting to close up. It thinks that it is night again.”

The foot-long and widespread starfish-like arms of the animal-plant were half closed, revealing the rough, grayisl underside. When completely closed they formed a ball, insulated against this incredibly harsh environment, holding tight to the minuscule amount of heat and energy the animal-plant had obtained, waiting for the sun to return once again. When it did, the arms would unfold to reveal the shiny black plates of their undersides, which captured and stored the radiation from the far distant sun. This tough growth was the only form of life discovered yet on Mars and, although its nickname “Mars cabbage” was now the official title, it was looked upon with respect, if not with awe, by all of them. This was the only Martian. Both men stood carefully aside so that the sunlight could fall on it again.

“It reminds me of some of the desert plants in Israel,” Arnie said.

“Do you miss Israel?” Nils asked.

“Yes, of course. You do not have to ask.” Because of the thin atmosphere his voice was a distant whisper, despite the fact he was talking loudly.

“I imagine you would. I know a lot of countries, and most of them look a lot more interesting than Denmark when first you fly in. I could live in any of them, I suppose, but I would still pick Denmark. I wouldn’t like to leave. I sometimes wonder how you managed to pack up and leave Israel on principle. I doubt if I could do a thing like that. Doubt if I would have the guts to do it myself.” He pointed. “Look, there it is, just like I told you. You can see the entire area from up here. There are the new buildings, just going up, and the landing area laid out beyond Galathea. When they will be needed, more buildings can be constructed along the eastern side. There is going to be an entire settlement here—a city some day. rhe railroad will go from right down there to the mountains where the mines will be.”

“A very optimistic project. But there is certainly no reason why it should not work out that way.” But Arnie was thinking about what Nils had said. About Israel. It was a topic that he worried to himself, like a sore tooth, ind he could not stay away from it. Although he rarely talked about it to anyone else. “What did you mean, exactly, when you said that what I did took guts? I did only what I had to do. Do you think that it was wrong—that I owed Israel loyalty ahead of all mankind!”

“Hell, no!” the big pilot said, and managed to get a boom of warmth into the whisper of his audible voice. “I’m on your side, don’t ever forget that. What I really mean is that I admire what you did, not selling out. If what you say is true, then staying would have been the big sellout. The same way that scientists have been selling out since the word science was invented. Bombs, poison gas, and death for the sake of my fatherland. That’s the direct sellout. Invent the atom bomb—then moan about the way it is being used but don’t stick your neck out. The indirect sellout. Or the wooi-over-the-eyes sellout: I’m working on nerve gases, germ warfare, bigger bombs, but they will never be used. Or the world-is-too-big-for-me-to-do-anything sellout, the one everyone uses. Dow Chemical makes napalm to cook people. But I can’t stop buying Dow products, it won’t make any difference. South Africa has the best police state in the world and a country full of legal Negro slaves. But I’ll still buy their oranges, what can I do? You can blame yourself for how I feel, Arnie.”

“What on Earth—I mean what on Mars—do you mean?” He stamped his feet as the cold began to seep through the soles of his boots.

“I mean that you did what I think I would not have had the guts to do. You stuck by your convictions, no matter what your personal loss. There have been all kinds of Dow and South Africa boycotts in Denmark, and I ignored them. Or laughed at them. What could I do? I flew and I lived well and I enjoyed myself. But you got under nr skin, showed me something different…”