Clifford Simak - No Life of Their Own And Other Stories

The sand gritted under Scott’s boots as he took a slow step forward.

So this was Mars! Here, at the North pole … the single building … the only evidence of intelligence on the entire planet. As the ship had circled the planet, cutting down its tremendous speed, he had studied the surface in the telescopic glass and this building had been the only habitation he had seen.

It stood there, made of shimmering metal, glinting in the pale sunlight.

“Bugs,” said Jimmy, at Scott’s elbow.

“What do you mean, bugs?” asked Scott.

“Bugs in the air,” said Jimmy. “Flying bugs.”

Scott saw them then. Things that looked like streaks of light in the feeble sunshine. Swarms of them hovered about the great building and others darted busily about.

“Bees,” suggested Jimmy.

But Scott shook his head. They weren’t bees. They glinted and flashed when the sun’s light struck them and they seemed more mechanical than life-like.

“Where are the Martians?” Jimmy demanded.

“I don’t know, Jimmy,” declared Scott. “Damned if I do.”

He had envisioned the first Earthmen reaching Mars as receiving thunderous ovation, a mighty welcome from the Martians. But there weren’t any Martians. Nothing stirred except the shining bugs and the lilies that nodded in a thin, cold breeze.

There was no sound, no movement. Like a quiet summer afternoon back on Earth, with a veil of quietness drawn over the flaming desert and the shimmering building.

He took another step, walking toward the great building. The sand grated protestingly beneath his boot-heels.

Slowly he approached the building, alert, watching, ready for some evidence that he and Jimmy had been seen. But no sign came. The bugs droned overhead, the lilies nodded sleepily. That was all.

Scott looked at the thermometer strapped to the wrist of his oxygen suit. The needle registered 10 above, Centigrade. Warm enough, but the suits were necessary, for the air was far too thin for human consumption.

Deep shadow lay at the base of the building and as he neared it, Scott made out something that gleamed whitely in the shadow. Something that struck a chord of remembrance in his brain, something he had seen back on Earth.

As he hurried forward he saw it was a cross. A white cross thrust into the sand.

With a cry he broke into a run.

Before the cross he dropped to his knees and read the crudely carved inscription on the wood. Just two words. The name of a man, carven with a jack-knife:

HARRY DECKER

Harry Decker! Scott felt his brain swimming crazily.

Harry Decker here! Harry Decker under the red sand of Mars! But that couldn’t be. Harry Decker’s name couldn’t be here. It was back on Earth, graven on that scroll of bronze. Graven there directly beneath the name of Hugh Nixon.

He staggered to his feet and stood swaying for a moment.

From somewhere far away he heard a shout and swinging around, ran toward the corner of the building.

Rounding it, he stopped in amazement.

There, in the shelter of the building, lay a rusted space ship and running across the sand toward him was a space-suited figure, a figure that yelled as it ran and carried a bag over its shoulder, the bag bouncing at every leap.

“Hugh!” yelled Scott.

And the grotesque figure bellowed back.

“Scott, you old devil! I knew you’d do it! I knew it was you the minute I heard the rocket blasts!”

“It’s nice and warm here now,” said Hugh, “but you’d ought to spend a winter here. An Arctic blizzard is a gentle breeze compared with the Martian pole in winter time. You don’t see the Sun for almost ten months and the mercury goes down to 100 below, Centigrade. Hoar frost piles up three and four feet thick and a man can’t stir out of the ship.”

He gestured at the bag.

“I was getting ready for another winter. Just like a squirrel. My supplies got low before this spring and I had to find something to store up against another season. I found a half dozen different kinds of bulbs and roots and some berries. I’ve been gathering them all summer, storing them away.”

“But the Martians?” protested Scott. “Wouldn’t the Martians help you?”

His brother looked at him curiously.

“The Martians?” he asked.

“Yes, the Martians.”

“Scott,” Hugh said, “I haven’t found the Martians.”

Scott stared at him. “Let’s get this straight now. You mean you don’t know who the Martians are?”

Hugh nodded. “That’s exactly it. I tried to find them hard enough. I did all sorts of screwy things to contact that intelligence which talked with the Earth and sent the rockets full of seed, but I’ve gotten exactly nowhere. I’ve finally given up.”

“Those bugs,” suggested Scott. “The shining bugs.”

Hugh shook his head. “No soap. I got the same idea and managed to bat down a couple of them. But they’re mechanical. That’s all. Just machines. Operated by radium.

“It almost drove me nuts at first. Those bugs flying around and the building standing there and the Martian lilies all around, but no signs of any intelligence. I tried to get into the building but there aren’t any doors or windows. Just little holes the bugs fly in and out of.

“I couldn’t understand a thing. Nothing seemed right. No purpose to any of it. No apparent reason. Only one thing I could understand. Over on the other side of the building I found the cradle that is used to shoot the rockets to Earth. I’ve watched that done.”

“But what happened?” asked Scott. “Why didn’t you come back? What happened to the ship?”

“We had no fuel,” said Hugh.

Scott nodded his head.

“A meteor in space.”

“Not that,” Hugh told him. “Harry simply turned the petcocks, let our gasoline run into the sand.”

“Good Lord! Was he crazy?”

“That’s exactly what he was,” Hugh declared. “Batty as a bedbug. Touch of space madness. I felt sorry for him. He cowered like a mad animal, beaten by the sense of loneliness and space. He was afraid of shadows. He got so he didn’t act like a man. I was glad for him when he died.”

“But even a crazy man would want to get back to Earth!” protested Scott.

“It wasn’t Harry,” Hugh explained. “It was the Martians, I am sure. Whatever or wherever they are, they probably have intelligences greater than ours. It would be no feat for them, perhaps, to gain control of the brain of a demented man. They might not be able to dominate us, but a man whose thought processes were all tangled up by space madness would be an easy mark for them. They could make him do and think whatever they wanted him to think or do. It wasn’t Harry who opened those petcocks, Scott. It was the Martians.”

He leaned against the pitted side of the ship and stared up at the massive building.

“I was plenty sore at him when I caught him at it,” he said. “I gave him one hell of a beating. I’ve always been sorry for that.”

“What finally happened to him?” asked Scott.

“He ran out of the airlock without his suit,” Hugh explained. “It took me half an hour to run him down and bring him back. He took pneumonia. You have to be careful here. Exposure to the Martian atmosphere plays hell with a man’s lung tissues. You can breathe it all right … might even be able to live in it for a few hours, but it’s deadly just the same.”

“Well, it’s all over now,” declared Scott. “We’ll get my ship squared around and we’ll blast off for Earth. We made it here and we can make it back. And you’ll be the first man who ever set his foot on Mars.”

Hugh grinned. “That will be something, won’t it, Scott? But somehow I’m not satisfied. I haven’t accomplished a thing. I haven’t even found the Martians. I know they’re here. An intelligence that’s at least capable of thinking along parallel lines with us although its thought processes may not be parallel with ours.”