Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

“Maybe they just don’t like us here period,” Dane said.

“This thing is not good. I’ve really got to go along with you now. Martians. It’s almost inevitable they are hostile.”

Dane shook his head. “Invasion from space is a pretty frightening business in any man’s world. They’ve also got to find out about our capabilities and our intent. Whether we intend to harm them or not. It would be a great tragedy if we can’t convince them we are beings that understand good will.”

“What if they don’t understand it themselves?”

“We’ve got to try,” Dane told him. “If we fail then the flight of the Far Venture is a colossal failure. Man, we’re face to face with the first intelligent beings Earth men have ever encountered. The conquest of space, if you want to call it that, oughtn’t to be allowed to start out with war and death and destruction. We have higher ideals than that. We just have to make them understood. Someway.”

Noel said, “I hear you talking. Maybe I’m no idealist by your standards, but first of all I want to see them. I want to know what we have to deal with. That’s what I’ve got to know before anything else.”

Slowly, with invisible movement, the six dots crept across the signal map, converging on the spacecraft. Dane stood by with Noel while one by one the out-parties came up and entered, and the dots that tracked them vanished one by one until all personnel were inside and the Martian map stood clear.

Dane said, “Now I’m going to answer their question. If it was a question. We’ve got to make them understand we’re friendly.”

He began to send the message he had converted to the Martian number code, making and breaking the radar-beam circuit as he had done dozens of times without response since the earliest contact. The long inarticulate generations, he thought, striving to express the forming subtleties of their spirit and finding only broad, dull words on their tongue. Awkwardly he spelled out, We are many men. From not-Mars. Add men to Martians equals good. What are Martians?

Hopefully he looked at the photo plane table but the map-like reception remained undisturbed. He went back to the switch and began his message again. We are many men . Add men to Martians equals good.

The map signal began to clear from the opaque glass. While they watched, pictogram symbols came on.

“They’re answering!” Dane exclaimed. “At last they’re going to answer us!”

He spelled it out, translating the symbols at sight. “ Martians are one. One is good. Not-one is bad. Many men equals bad. ”

“Sounds like a dictator,” Noel commented.

A flash of light briefly dominated the observation deck. A simultaneous crackling blast like diminutive thunder smote them. They stared at each other.

“Thunder and lightning?” Noel exclaimed. “Impossible!”

The flashes and the diminished thunderclaps increased in tempo, flaring at the ports like a barrage of old-time artillery in a historical motion picture.

“The spark fires!” Dane shouted above the cracking crescendo. “They’re attacking us with the spark fires!”

Through the ports they saw arcing bolts dart heavily from the distant lichen beds upon the spacecraft.

“First daytime storm yet,” Noel yelled. “We’re right in the middle of it.”

“It’s an attack,” Dane shouted again. “They’re trying to burn us up with their electrical discharges.”

Noel’s face twisted up. He shook his head. “Electrical storm of some kind. Our metal is drawing it.” He jabbed a finger at the intercom. “That thing’s useless in all this. But our metal meteor shield will ground it okay. Nothing to worry about.”

He could be right, Dane thought for a moment. But it was too pat. The message. An avowal of enmity itself. Then immediately the concentration of discharges on them. No, it was more than probable that the Martians had decided to destroy them. Fearful things from another world. Not to be trusted. But after the extended and laborious effort to establish a crude exchange of communication, what could have led them to a sudden decision? If it was the message he had sent, they knew everything in it already. Unless it was the one about adding men to Martians. Maybe that meant something different to them than he had meant by it.

The eye-splitting fires now leaped so rapidly upon them that the sand plain danced crazily under the staccato flashes. From horizon to horizon, up and down the long swing of the lichen beds, the bolts converged against the metallic toadstool hunched up antenna-like on the sands to receive them. It was impossible not to listen for the sounds of dissolution, for creak and groan of straining plates and beams.

Major Noel shouted below for a messenger, and the buzzers called the Air Force crew to emergency stations. Dane visualized the men hurrying to their posts in the channels and working recesses of the intricate, enormous mechanism. Then Noel was motioning him to go below. He shook his head.

The spark fire mounted steadily into a vast, flickering concourse, surging wildly over the full sunshine of the Martian noon. They awaited the unknown climax. There was nothing else to do. The circular, domed chamber in the nose of the Far Venture, like the interior of a metallic igloo, inspired no confidence of sustaining the spectacular assault mounted against it, for all its welded and rivet-headed seams. Its multiwired electronic probing devices menacingly threatened the entry of the currents drenching the exterior sheathing and coursing down through it into the ground.

For forty-two minutes the attack endured. Then suddenly it ceased. As abruptly as if a switch had been pulled. Sun-born light came back to Mars, and a pervasive quiet drowned the heavy staccato of giant firecrackers. All over the Far Venture movement was suspended while the assembly fore-bore to draw breath. Outside, the sands of Mars were as empty as through all the hours since the landing. There were no legions of monstrous beings.

They had come through. For the moment at least their defenses had held.

“Look!” Noel exclaimed.

A few pictogram symbols stood forth on the plane table. Dane read them aloud. “ Men move? ”

Noel said, “They’re not too bright if they expect us to answer that. We sit tight and let them come to find out if we’re still alive. We’ll have a few surprises for them.” He went to the phone. “I want all firing stations continuously manned. Double watch on all lookout points. And send two more men up here.” He hung up sharply. “If they want to play rough when they show, we’ll put some real heat on them. Then we’ll discuss things with them some more. Maybe they’ll talk another kind of turkey.”

“No,” Dane objected. “We don’t want to hurt any of them, except as a last resort.”

Noel lifted the hatch. “It’s up to Colonel Cragg for the final decision. But they’ve showed their hand.”

DANE STOOD for a while over the photo plane table, but the incoming signal showed no change. From time to time he went to gaze briefly out over the red terrain. Between the line of the lichen beds with the finger thrust forward at the Far Venture and the line of flat sand hills that completed the surrounding horizon lay nothing but the gentle drifts of the desert.

At 1217 hours the signal went off. Dane watched closely, but the opaque glass bore only the scanning of the near environs. At 1245 he commented to the command post on the state of his appetite. At 1300 Lieutenant Yudin’s round face rose out of the hatch.

He said, “I’ve got word for you from Colonel Cragg. Orders, that is.”

Dane spoke shortly. “Did Colonel Cragg enjoy his lunch?”