Clifford Simak - All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

Aboard it were five brave men — Thomas Delvaney, the expedition's leader; Jerry Cooper, the red-thatched navigator; Andy Smith, the world's ace cameraman, and two space-hands, Jimmy Watson and Elmer Paine, grim old veterans of the Earth-Moon run.

There had been three other "Hello Mars" ships — three other ships that had never come back — three other flights that had collided with a meteor a million miles out from the Moon. The second had flared briefly, deep in space, a red splash of flame in the telescopes through which the flight was watched — the fuel tanks had exploded. The third had simply disappeared. On and on it had gone, boring outward until lost from sight. That had been six years ago, but men still wondered what had happened.

Four years later — two years ago — the "Hello Mars IV" had taken off. Today it was returning, a gleaming thing far out in space, a shining symbol of man's conquest of the planets. It had reached Mars — and it was coming back. There would be others, now — and still others. Some would flare against the black and be lost forever. But others would win through, and man, blindly groping, always outward, to break his earthly bonds, at last would be on the pathway to the stars.

Jack Woods, «Express» reporter, lit a cigarette and asked:

"What do you figure they found out there, Doc?"

Dr. Stephen Gilmer, director of the Interplanetary Communications Research Commission, puffed clouds of smoke from his black cigar and answered irritably:

"How in blue hell would I know what they found? I hope they found something. This trip cost us a million bucks."

"But can't you give me some idea of what they might have found?" persisted Woods. "Some idea of what Mars is like. Any new ideas."

Dr. Gilmer wrangled the cigar viciously.

"And have you spread it all over the front page," he said. "Spin something out of my own head just because you chaps are too impatient to wait for the actual data. Not by a damn sight. You reporters get my goat sometimes."

"Ah, Doc, give us something," pleaded Gary Henderson, staff man for the Star.

"Sure," said Don Buckley, of the «Spaceways». "What do you care? You can always say we misquoted you. It wouldn't be the first time."

Gilmer gestured toward the official welcoming committee that stood a short distance away.

"Why don't you get the mayor to say something, boys?" he suggested. "The mayor is always ready to say something."

"Sure," said Gary, "but it never adds up to anything. We've had the mayor's face on the front page so much lately that he thinks he owns the paper."

"Have you any idea why they haven't radioed us?" asked

Woods. "They've been in sending distance for several hours now."

Gilmer rolled the cigar from east to west. "Maybe they broke the radio," he said.

Nevertheless there were little lines of worry on his face. The fact that there had been no messages from the "Hello Mars IV" troubled him. If the radio had been broken it could have been repaired.

Six hours ago the "Hello Mars IV" had entered atmosphere. Even now it was circling the Earth in a strenuous effort to lose speed. Word that the ship was nearing Earth had brought spectators to the field in ever-increasing throngs. Highways and streets were jammed for miles around.

Perspiring police cordons struggled endlessly to keep the field clear for a landing. The day was hot, and soft drink stands were doing a rushing business. Women fainted in the crowd and some men were knocked down and trampled. Ambulance sirens sounded.

"Humph," Woods grunted. "We can send space-ships to Mars, but we don't know how to handle crowds."

He stared expectantly into the bright blue bowl of the sky.

"Ought to be getting in pretty soon," he said.

His words were blotted out by a mounting roar of sound. The ear-splitting explosions of roaring rocket tubes. The thunderous drumming of the ship shooting over the horizon.

The bellow from the crowd competed with the roaring of the tubes as the "Hello Mars IV" shimmered like a streak of silver light over the field. Then fading in the distance, it glowed redly as its forward tubes shot flame.

"Cooper sure is giving her everything he has," Woods said in awe. "He'll melt her down, using the tubes like that."

He stared into the west, where the ship had vanished. His cigarette forgotten, burned down and scorched his fingers.

Out of the tail of his eye he saw Jimmy Andrews, the «Express» photographer.

"Did you get a picture?" Woods roared at him.

"Picture, hell," Andrews shouted back. "I can't shoot greased lightning."

The ship was coming back again, its speed slowed, but still traveling at a terrific pace. For a moment it hung over the horizon and then nosed down toward the field.

"He can't land at that speed," Woods yelled. "It'll crack wide open!"

"Look out," roared a dozen voices and then the ship was down, its nose plowing into the ground, leaving in its wake a smoking furrow of raw earth, its tail tilting high in the air, threatening to nose over on its back.

The crowd at the far end of the field broke and stampeded, trampling, clawing, pushing, shoving, suddenly engulfed in a hysteria of fear at the sight of the ship plowing toward them.

But the "Hello Mars IV" stopped just short of the police cordon, still right side up. A pitted, battered ship — finally home from space — the first ship to reach Mars and return.

The newspapermen and photographers were rushing forward. The crowd was shrieking. Automobile horns and sirens blasted the air. From the distant rim of the city rose the shrilling of whistles and the far-away roll of clamoring bells.

As Woods ran a thought hammered in his head. A thought that had an edge of apprehension. There was something wrong. if Jerry Cooper had been at the controls, he never would have landed the ship at such speed. It had been a madman's stunt to land a ship that way. Jerry was a skilled navigator, averse to taking chances. Jack had watched him in the Moon Derby five years before and the way Jerry could handle a ship was beautiful to see.

The valve port in the ship's control cabin swung slowly open, clanged back against the metal side. A man stepped out — a man who staggered jerkily forward and then stumbled and fell in a heap.

Dr. Gilmer rushed to him, lifted him in his arms.

Woods caught a glimpse of the man's face as his head lolled in Gilmer's arms. It was Jerry Cooper's face — but a face that was twisted and changed almost beyond recognition, a face that burned itself into Jack Wood's brain, indelibly etched there, something to be remembered with a shudder through the years. A haggard face with deeply sunken eyes, with hollow cheeks, with drooling lips that slobbered sounds that were not words.

A hand pushed at Woods.

"Get out of my way," shrilled Andrews~ "How do you expect me to take a picture?"

The newsman heard the camera whirr softly, heard the click of changing plates.

"Where are the others?" Gilmer was shouting at Cooper. The man looked up at him vacantly, his face twisting itself into a grimace of pain and fear.

"Where are the others?" Gilmer shouted again, his voice ringing over the suddenly hushed stillness of the crowd.

Cooper jerked his head toward the ship.

"In there," he whispered and the whisper cut like a sharp-edged knife.

He mumbled drooling words, words that meant nothing. Then with an effort he answered.

"Dead," he said.

And in the silence that followed, he said again:

"All dead!"

They found the others in the living quarters back of the locked control room. All four of them were dead — had been dead for days. Andy Smith's skull had been crushed by a mighty blow.

Jimmy Watson had been strangled, with the blue raised welts of blunt fingers still upon his throat. Elmer Paine's body was huddled in a corner, but upon him there were no marks of violence, although his face was contorted into a visage of revulsion, a mask of pain and fear and suffering. Thomas Delvaney's body sprawled beside a table. His throat had been opened with an old fashioned straight-edge razor. The razor, stained with blackened blood, was tightly clutched in the death grip of his right hand.