Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

They had never intended to land, but had circled the planet, making routine checks and entering routine data in the survey record.

Then someone at a telescope had seen the junkyard and they’d gone down to investigate and had been forthrightly pitchforked into a maddening puzzle.

They had called it the junkyard and that was what it was. Strewn about were what probably were engine parts, although no one was quite sure. Pollard, the mech engineer, had driven himself to the verge of frenzy trying to figure out how to put some of the parts together. He finally got three of them assembled, somehow, and they didn’t mean a thing, so he tried to take them apart again to figure out how he’d done it. He couldn’t get them apart. It was about that time that Pollard practically blew his top.

The engine parts, if that was what they were, were scattered all over the place, as if someone or something had tossed them away, not caring where they fell. But off to one side was a pile of other stuff, all neatly stacked, and it was apparent even to the casual glance that this stuff must be a pile of supplies.

There was what more than likely was food, though it was a rather strange kind of food (if that was what it was), and strangely fabricated bottles of plastic that held a poison liquid, and other stuff that was fabric and might have been clothing, although it gave one the shudders trying to figure out what sort of creatures would have worn that kind of clothing, and bundles of metallic bars, held together in the bundles by some kind of gravitational attraction instead of the wires that a human would have used to tie them in bundles. And a number of other objects for which there were no names.

“They should have found the answer,” Warren said. “They’ve cracked tougher nuts than this. In the month we’ve been here, they should have had that engine running.”

“If it is an engine,” Bat Ears pointed out.

“What else could it be?”

“You’re getting so that you sound like them. Run into something that you can’t explain and think up the best guess possible and when someone questions you, you ask what else it could be. And that ain’t proof, Ira.”

“You’re right, Bat Ears,” Warren admitted. “It certainly isn’t proof and that’s what worries me. We have no doubt the junk out there is a spaceship engine, but we have no proof of it.”

“Nobody’s going to land a ship,” said Bat Ears testily, “and rip out the engine and just throw it away. If they’d done that, the ship would still be here.”

“But if that’s not the answer,” demanded Warren, “what is all that stuff out there?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m not even curious. I ain’t the one that’s worrying.”

He got up from the chair and moved toward the door.

“I still got that bottle, Ira.”

“No, thanks,” Warren said.

He sat and listened to Bar Ears’ feet going down the stairs.

Kenneth Spencer, the alien psychologist, came into the cabin and sat down in the chair across the desk from Warren.

“We’re finally through,” he said.

“You aren’t through,” challenged Warren. “You haven’t even started.”

“We’ve done all we can.”

Warren grunted at him.

“We’ve run all sorts of tests,” said Spencer. “We’ve got a book full of analyses. We have a complete photographic record and everything is down on paper in diagrams and notes and –”

“Then tell me: What is that junk out there?”

“It’s a spaceship engine.”

“If it’s an engine,” Warren said, “let’s put it together. Let’s find out how it runs. Let’s figure out the kind of intelligence most likely to have built it.”

“We tried,” replied Spencer. “All of us tried. Some of us didn’t have applicable knowledge or training, but even so we worked; we helped the ones who had training.”

“I know how hard you worked.”

And they had worked hard, only snatching stolen hours to sleep, eating on the run.

“We are dealing with alien mechanics,” Spencer said.

“We’ve dealt with other alien concepts,” Warren reminded him. “Alien economics and alien religions and alien psychology …”

“But this is different.”

“Not so different. Take Pollard, now. He is the key man in this situation. Wouldn’t you have said that Pollard should have cracked it?”

“If it can be cracked, Pollard is your man. He has everything – the theory, the experience, the imagination.”

“You think we should leave?” asked Warren. “That’s what you came in here to tell me? You think there is no further use of staying here?”

“That’s about it,” Spencer admitted.

“All right,” Warren told him. “If you say so, I’ll take your word for it. We’ll blast off right after supper. I’ll tell Bat Ears to fix us up a spread. A sort of achievement dinner.”

“Don’t rub it in so hard,” protested Spencer. “We’re not proud of what we’ve done.”

Warren heaved himself out of the chair.

“I’ll go down and tell Mac to get the engines ready. On the way down, I’ll stop in on Bar Ears and tell him.”

Spencer said, “I’m worried, Warren.”

“So am I. What is worrying you?”

“Who are these things, these other people, who had the other spaceship? They’re the first, you know, the first evidence we’ve ever run across of another race that had discovered space flight. And what happened to them here?”

“Scared?”

“Yes. Aren’t you?”

“Not yet,” said Warren. “I probably will be when I have the time to think it over.”

He went down the stairs to talk to Mac about the engines.

He found Mac sitting in his cubby hole, smoking his blackened pipe and reading his thumb-marked Bible.

“Good news,” Warren said to him.

Mac laid down the book and took off his glasses.

“There’s but one thing you could tell me that would be good news,” he said.

“This is it. Get the engines ready. We’ll be blasting off.”

“When, sir? Not that it can be too soon.”

“In a couple of hours or so,” said Warren. “We’ll eat and get settled in. I’ll give you the word.”

The engineer folded the spectacles and slid them in his pocket. He tapped the pipe out in his hand and tossed away the ashes and put the dead pipe back between his teeth.

“I’ve never liked this place,” he said.

“You never like any place.”

“I don’t like them towers.”

“You’re crazy, Mac. There aren’t any towers.”

“The boys and me went walking,” said the engineer. “We found a bunch of towers.”

“Rock formations, probably.”

“Towers,” insisted the engineer doggedly.

“If you found some towers,” Warren demanded, “why didn’t you report them?”

“And have them science beagles go baying after them and have to stay another month?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Warren said. “They probably aren’t towers. Who would mess around building towers on this backwash of a planet?”

“They were scary,” Mac told him. “They had that black look about them. And the smell of death.”

“It’s the Celt in you. The big, superstitious Celt you are, rocketing through space from world to world – and still believing in banshees and spooks. The medieval mind in the age of science.”

Mac said, “They fair give a man the shivers.”

They stood facing one another for a long moment. Then Warren put out a hand and tapped the other gently on the shoulder.

“I won’t say a word about them,” he said. “Now get those engines rolling.”

Warren sat in silence at the table’s head, listening to the others talk.