Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

He jabbed the paragraphing finger again. “What our readers really want to do, though, is bleed over a man standing on another world and knowing his wife and kids are a hundred million miles away. They want to know how he sleeps nights and how he eats his meals in the daytime on Mars. They want to know that the bravest of the crew was not ashamed to be afraid, because he was sustained by the spirit. Wave the flag, man, and don’t forget the church for the old-timers.

“They want to know what the men look forward to doing first after they get back to Earth. Go to the fights? Go out on a picnic with the kids? Marry the girl friend? Buy a home with the bonus money for down payment? You want to tell our readers how it feels to climb out into the planetary cold and walk around in an air-conditioned pressure suit. But most of all they want to bleed over the daily life of one of the crew. Give them a young, clean-cut American boy brought up by his mother’s teachings. Show them Mars through his eyes and how his upbringing helps him. I want every mother in America to bleed for the mothers with boys on the Far Venture. And every wife to suffer with the wives suffering at home. There’s a woman behind every man on that space ship. There’s your news with a capital N. I want every woman in America to feel down deep inside what it is to give a man to the Far Venture and sacrifice so much to meet this challenge to the spirit of man triumphing over unbelievable odds. Now give it to me from there. All the way.”

Not one precious paragraph had he yet set down to glorify the brave little nation builders whose travail brings forth strong men children. But the chore lay in wait. Fifty thousand words of it. A hundred thousand driveling words of it. If the return to Earth was accomplished. Daily installments. Exclusive. An Amalgamated Exclusive: “Men on Mars.” Only the fact that radio to Earth was out had saved him so far.

Work three years for Amalgamated and success. Endure for three years and success guaranteed. Please the great Ames and be anointed pimp for the bravely suppressed snivelling of fifty million frumps. He went into the toilet and relieved himself. In the spotless mirror over the lavatory the face that looked back was sharply outlined, the jaw line unblurred and reasonably uncompromising. He smote his belly. Not too much physical softness. It was in the mind, agreeing to connive and scheme like an ad man for the attention of idiot dreamers.

He splashed his face with the flat, manufactured water and dampened his close-cut hair, knowing he wasn’t going to do it. Even saying it aloud to the gurgle of the drain. For whoever came and found it, he was going to write about how long and unheroic it was to die shut in a can—even unafraid once it had become inevitable—just as it was for an infantry soldier of a defeated army in one of the old wars, dying near the end in a confused woods from unaimed fire, after years of shrewd personal dealings with tanks and automatic weapons and probing patrols. It was no different on Mars. Not by a damn sight.

In the morning he woke to a bad taste from the brandy and a reluctance to get out of the bed. In the act of throwing back the sheet he remembered. He smiled caustically at the bottle of calvados he had brought with him for a last one-for-the-road.

Even so, he felt good. Considering the situation of the spacecraft, it was unlikely that Amalgamated would soon, if ever, know that he had resigned, but he could feel better about it.

ERNIE HEILEMAN was in the main-deck mess hall, his long legs jack-knifed around the corner of one of the tables and his wide blond mustache bowed in devotion over a plate of scrambled eggs.

He grinned and kicked a chair around for Dane. “Since I am unable to pronounce ‘eggs’ in French, you will have to read the menu for yourself, my boy. The ham is not bad. As a matter of fact you may bring me another slice. Not to speak of a piece of lightly buttered toast and a fresh cup of coffee.”

“It’s fortunate that I happened to wander in during my morning stroll along the boulevard,” Dane said. “Otherwise you might well have starved. Then we’d have had the impossible job of untangling you from that chair. Are you sitting in it or lying down on it?”

“Most persons are oafish in the early morning,” Heileman sighed. “While you’re at it, make that two slices of toast. I must build up my strength. Lightly buttered, mind you.”

Dane loaded a tray at the serving window and took it back to the offered chair. Heileman attacked his fresh slice of ham. After a few mouthfuls he said, “It’s getting pretty thick, isn’t it?” He knifed precisely around the annular bone. “I’ve got a feeling of something closing in on us. Like waiting for a knock on the door, after you’ve broken a window and run home. The inevitability that something pretty terrible has to happen and there’s nothing to do but wait for it. What do you think; John? What do you really think?”

It was discomforting to see Heileman disturbed, out of character. “There isn’t much else to think except that some kind of intelligent somethings are looking us over very carefully,” Dane repeated himself. “Maybe like specimens on display. Who knows? What did we do ourselves in the early days of exploration of Earth? Explorers brought back specimens as a matter of course. Curiosity and profit were more important than any consideration of the welfare of the specimens themselves.”

Heileman looked carefully around the yellow and blue-trimmed premises of the plate-walled messroom. “I’ve got to admit I didn’t think it would be like this. Immobile here. God knows what around us. Even the damned vegetation eating through metal bulkheads. We carry enough armament to defeat a small army, but what the hell good is it against something we can’t even imagine? Where could they be? We surveyed the entire surface of the planet before we landed. We couldn’t have missed any kind of civilization at all. We’d have been certain to see something of it, no matter how scattered and dispersed it was.”

Dane didn’t want to talk about it. “Unless the Martians are very small. Say on the order of a sixteenth of an inch tall. They could hide sizable towns under the lichen forests.”

“You think they could be like some kind of an insect, John? Wertz was telling me last night about what you told Yudin. He said it was your idea they might even be submicroscopic. But how would a minute creature like that build a transmitter capable of sending the signals we have been getting? It’s not mechanically possible.”

“That we don’t know. Or anything else, for that matter,” Dane told him. He spoke with finality and got up to go. He just didn’t want to talk about it. Not with Heileman, from whom he was accustomed to have light banter. It drew the menace in, all around and waiting, to have Heileman this way. Nonsense, he thought. He’s scared just like the rest of us. And why not? It was peculiar that he should feel so about it. Just because it was Heileman.

“What’s your hurry?” Heileman said. “Time for your train?” He managed one of his grins. “Let’s you and me take a little stroll this fine summer’s morn. We can put on a nicely pressed pressure suit and saunter over to Judah’s mine. Maybe he’s dug up Captain Kidd’s treasure and we’ll force him to share it. This is a heist,” he flatted menacingly. “Fill up this bag with doubloons afore we turn off your air conditioner. Instanter.”

It would be something to do. Judah was now down about ninety feet in his study of the planet’s crust. Not that anything spectacular had been unearthed, but it would be interesting to see. How do you get doubloons here? You couldn’t very well unearth them. Do you unmars them?” he ventured.