Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - The Sirens of Titan

"Sure," said Unk. His soul felt the pressure of the miles of rock above. And his soul felt the true nature of their predicament. On all sides and overhead were passages that branched and branched and branched. And the branches forked to twigs, and the twigs forked to passages no larger than a human pore.

Unk's soul was right in feeling that not one branch in ten thousand led all the way to the surface.

The space ship, thanks to the brilliantly-conceived sensing gear on its bottom, had sensed its way easily down and down and down, through one of the very few ways in - down and down and down one of the very few ways out.

What Unk's soul hadn't suspected yet was the congenital stupidity of the pilot-navigator when it came to going up. It had never occurred to the designers that the ship might encounter problems in going tip. All Martian ships, after all, were meant to take off from an unobstructed field on Mars, and to be abandoned after landing on Earth. Consequently, there was virtually no sensing equipment on the ship for hazards overhead.

"So long, old cave," said Boaz.

Casually, Unk pressed the on button.

The pilot-navigator hummed.

In ten Earthling seconds, the pilot-navigator was warm.

The ship left the cave floor with whispering ease, touched a wall, dragged its rim up the wall with a grinding, tearing scream, bashed its dome on an overhead projection, backed off, bashed its dome again, backed off, grazed the projection, climbed whisperingly again. Then came the grinding scream again - this time from all sides.

All upward motion had stopped.

The ship was wedged in solid rock.

The pilot-navigator whimpered.It sent a wisp of mustard-colored smoke up through the floor-boards of the cabin.

The pilot-navigator stopped whimpering.

It had overheated, and overheating was a signal for the pilot-navigator to extricate the ship from a hopeless mess. This it proceeded to do - grindingly. Steel members groaned. Rivets snapped like rifle shots.

At last the ship was free.

The pilot-navigator knew when it was licked. It flew the ship back down to the cave floor, landing with a kiss.

The pilot-navigator shut itself off.

Unk pushed the on button again.

Again the ship blundered up into a blind passage, again retreated, again settled to the floor and shut itself off.

The cycle was repeated a dozen times, until it was plain that the ship would only bash itself to pieces. Already its frame was badly sprung.

When the ship settled to the cave floor for the twelfth time, Unk and Boaz went to pieces. They cried.

"We're dead, Unk - we're dead!" said Boaz. "I've never been alive that I can remember," said Unk brokenly. "I thought I was finally going to get some living done."

Unk went to a porthole, looked out with streaming eyes.

He saw that the creatures nearest the porthole had outlined in aquamarine a perfect, pale yellow letter T.

The making of a T was well within the limits of probability for brainless creatures distributing themselves at random. But then Unk saw that the T was preceded by a perfect S. And the S was preceded by a perfect B.

Unk moved his head to one side, looked through the porthole obliquely. The movement gave him a perspective down a hundred yards of harmonium-infested wall.

Unk was flabbergasted to see that the harmoniums were forming a message in dazzling letters.

The message was this, in pale yellow, outlined in aquamarine: IT'S AN INTELLIGENCE TEST!

The best-selling book in recent times has been The Winston Niles Rumfoord Authorized Revised Bible. Next in popularity is that delightful forgery, The Beatrice Rumfoord Galactic Cookbook. The third most popular is The Winston Niles Rumfoord Pocket History of Mars. The fourth most popular is a children's book, Unk and Boaz in the Caves of Mercury, by Sarah Home Canby.

The publisher's bland analysis of Mrs. Canby's book's success appears on the dust jacket: "What child wouldn't like to be shipwrecked on a space ship with a cargo of hamburgers, hot dogs, catsup, sporting goods, and soda pop?"

Dr. Frank Minot, in his Are Adults Harmoniums?, sees something more sinister in the love children have for the book. "Dare we consider," he asks, "how close Unk and Boaz are to the everyday experience of children when Unk and Boaz deal solemnly and respectfully with creatures that are in fact obscenely unmotivated, insensitive, and dull?" Minot, in drawing a parallel between human parents and harmoniums, refers to the dealings of Unk and Boaz with harmoniums. The harmoniums spelled out for Unk and Boaz a new message of hope or veiled derision every fourteen Earthling days - for three years.

The messages were written, of course, by Winston Niles Rumfoord, who materialized briefly on Mercury at fourteen-day intervals. He peeled off harmoniums here, slapped others up there, making the block letters.

In Mrs. Canby's tale, the first intimation given that Rumfoord is around the caves from time to time is given in a scene very close to the end - a scene wherein Unk finds the tracks of a big dog in the dust.

At this point in the story it is mandatory, if an adult is reading the story aloud to a child, for the adult to ask the child with delicious hoarseness, "Who wuzza dog?"

Dog wuzza Kazak. Dog wuzza Winston Niles Rumfoord's great big mean chrono-synclastic infundibulated dog.

Unk and Boaz had been on Mercury for three Earthling years when Unk found Kazak's footprints in the dust on the floor of a cave corridor. Mercury had carried Unk and Boaz twelve and a half times around the Sun.

Unk found the prints on a floor six miles above the chamber in which the dented, scarred, and rock-bound space ship lay. Unk didn't live in the space ship any more, and neither did Boaz. The space ship served merely as a common supply base to which Unk and Boaz returned for provisions once every Earthling month or so.

Unk and Boaz rarely met. They moved in very different circles.

The circles in which Boaz moved were small. His abode was fixed and richly furnished. It was on the same level as the space ship, only a quarter of a mile away from it.

The circles in which Unk moved were vast and restless. He had no home. He traveled light and he traveled far, climbing ever higher until he was stopped by cold. Where the cold stopped Unk, the cold stopped the harmoniums, too. On the upper levels where Unk wandered, the harmoniums were stunted and few.

On the cozy lower level where Boaz lived, the harmoniums were plentiful and fast-growing.

Boaz and Unk had separated after one Earthling year together in the space ship. In that first year together, it had become clear to both of them that they weren't going to get out unless something or somebody came and got them out.

That had been clear, even though the creatures on the walls continued to spell out new messages emphasizing the fairness of the test to which Unk. and Boaz were being subjected, the ease with which they might escape, if only they would think a little harder, if they would only think a little more intricately.