Robert Heinlein: A Stranger in a Strange Land

The ensuing silence was broken smoothly by Secretary General Douglas himself. "And a good job, too, Captain. Your advice will be weighed, and be assured that we will not do anything hastily. If this man, or man-Martian, Smith, needs a few days to get adjusted, I'm sure that science can wait - so take it easy, Pete. Let's table this part of the discussion, gentlemen, and get on to other matters. Captain van Tromp is tired."

"One thing won't wait," said the Minister for Public Information.

"Eh, Jock?"

"If we don't show the Man from Mars in the stereo tanks pretty shortly, you'll have riots on your hands, Mr. Secretary."

"Hmm - you exaggerate, Jock. Mars stuff in the news, of course. Me decorating the captain and his brave crew - tomorrow, that had better be. Captain van Tromp telling of his experiences - after a night's rest of course, Captain."

The minister shook his head.

"No good, Jock?"

"The public expected the expedition to bring back at least one real live Martian for them to gawk at. Since they didn't, we need Smith and need him badly."

"'Live Martians?'" Secretary General Douglas turned to Captain van Tromp. "You have movies of Martians, haven't you?"

"Thousands of feet."

"There's your answer, Jock. When the live stuff gets thin, trot on the movies of Martians. The people will love it. Now, Captain, about this possibility of extraterritoriality: you say the Martians were not opposed to it?"

"Well, no, sir - but they were not for it, either."

"I don't follow you?"

Captain van Tromp chewed his lip. "Sir, I don't know just how to explain it. Talking with a Martian is something like talking with an echo. You don't get any argument but you don't get results either."

"Semantic difficulty? Perhaps you should have brought what's-his-name, your semantician, with you today. Or is he waiting outside?"

"Mahmoud, sir. No, Doctor Mahmoud is not well. A - a slight nervous breakdown, sir." Van Tromp reflected that being dead drunk was the moral equivalent thereof.

"Space happy?"

"A little, perhaps." These damned groundhogs!

"Well, fetch him around when he's feeling himself. young man Smith should be of help as an interpreter."

"Perhaps," van Tromp said doubtfully.

This young man Smith was busy at that moment just staying alive. His body, unbearably compressed and weakened by the strange shape of space in this unbelievable place, was at last somewhat relieved by the softness of the nest in which these others had placed him. He dropped the effort of sustaining it, and turned his third level to his respiration and heart beat.

He saw at once that he was about to consume himself. His lungs were beating almost as hard as they did at home, his heart was racing to distribute the influx, all in an attempt to cope with the squeezing of space - and this in a situation in which he was smothered by a poisonously rich and dangerously hot atmosphere. He took immediate steps.

When his heart rate was down to twenty per minute and his respiration almost imperceptible, he set them at that and watched himself long enough to assure himself that he would not inadvertently discorporate while his attention was elsewhere. When he was satisfied that they were running properly, he set a tiny portion of his second level on guard and withdrew the rest of himself. It was necessary to review the configurations of these many new events in order to fit them to himself, then cherish and praise them - lest they swallow him up.

Where should he start? When he had left home, enfolding these others who were now his own nestlings? Or simply at his arrival in this crushed space? He was suddenly assaulted by the lights and sounds of that arrival, feeling it again with mind-shaking pain. No, he was not yet ready to cherish and embrace that configuration - back! back! back beyond his first sight of these others who were now his own. Back even before the healing which had followed his first grokking of the fact that he was not as his nestling brothers� back to the nest itself.

None of his thinkings had been in Earth symbols. Simple English he had freshly learned to speak, but much less easily than a Hindu uses it to trade with a Turk. Smith used English as one might use a code book, with tedious and imperfect translation for each symbol. Now his thoughts, pure Martian abstractions from half a million years of wildly alien culture, traveled so far from any human experience as to be utterly untranslatable.

In the adjoining room an intern, Dr. "Tad" Thaddeus, was playing cribbage with Tom Meechum, Smith's special nurse. Thaddeus had one eye on his dials and meters and both eyes on his cards; nevertheless he noted every heart beat of his patient. When a flickering light changed from ninety-two pulsations per minute to less than twenty, he pushed the cards aside, jumped to his feet, and hurried into Smith's room with Meechum at his heels.

The patient floated in the flexible skin of the hydraulic bed. He appeared to be dead. Thaddeus swore briefly and snapped, "Get Doctor Nelson!"

Meechum said, "Yessir!" and added, "How about the shock gear, Doc? He's far gone."

"Get Doctor Nelson!"

The nurse rushed out. The interne examined the patient as closely as possible but refrained from touching him. He was still doing so when an older doctor came in, walking with the labored awkwardness of a man long in space and not yet adjusted to high gravity. "Well, Doctor?"

"Patient's respiration, temperature, and pulse dropped suddenly, uh, about two minutes ago, sir."

"What have you done for him, or to him?"

"Nothing, sir. Your instructions-"

"Good." Nelson looked Smith over briefly, then studied the instruments back of the bed, twins of those in the watch room. "Let me know if there is any change." He started to leave.

Thaddeus looked startled. "But, Doctor-" He broke off.

Nelson said grimly, "Go ahead, Doctor. What is your diagnosis?"

"Uh, I don't wish to sound off about your patient, sir."

"Never mind. I asked for your diagnosis."

"Very well, sir. Shock - atypical, perhaps," he hedged, "but shock, leading to termination."

Nelson nodded. "Reasonable enough. But this isn't a reasonable case. Relax, son. I've seen this patient in this condition half a dozen times during the trip back. It doesn't mean a thing. Watch." Nelson lifted the patient's right arm, let it go. It stayed where he had left it.

"Catalepsy?" asked Thaddeus.

"Call it that if you like. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one. Don't worry about it, Doctor. There is nothing typical about this case. Just keep him from being bothered and call me if there is any change." He replaced Smith's arm.

When Nelson had left, Thaddeus took one more look at the patient, shook his head and joined Meechum in the watch room. Meechum picked up his cards and said, "Crib?"

"No."

Meechum waited, then added, "Doc, if you ask me, that one in there is a case for the basket before morning."

"No one asked you."

"My mistake."

"Go out and have a cigarette with the guards. I want to think."

Meechum shrugged and left. Thaddeus opened a bottom drawer, took out a bottle and poured himself a dose intended to help his thinking. Meechum joined the guards in the corridor; they straightened up, then saw who it was and relaxed. The taller marine said, "Howdy, pal. What was the excitement just now?"

"Nothing much. The patient just had quintuplets and we were arguing about what to name them. Which one of you monkeys has got a butt? And a light?"

The other marine dug a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket. "How're you fixed for Suction?" he asked bleakly.

"Just middlin'. Thanks." Meechum stuck the cigarette in his face and talked around it. "Honest to God, gentlemen, I don't know anything about this patient. I wish I did."