Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

‘I don’t want to see,’ she said, turning her back. It was a deadly insult under the ancient Martian code of honour, and she knew it and Philip Hardacre knew she knew it, and there was hate in his throat, but there was no time now for hate.

He got up from the panel. There was no doubt about it. An amateur could have taken the blip for an asteroid or another ship but after twenty years you knew immediately. ‘Suit up,’ he said. ‘Spaceside in three minutes.’

He helped the young fellow with the helmet and what he had been dreading happened, the Martian had taken out his own suit and was stiffly putting his rear pair of legs into it. He went over to him and put his hand between the two necks in the traditional gesture of appeal. ‘This is not your hunt, Ghlmu,’ he said in the archaic Martian courtly tongue.

‘I am still strong and he is big and he comes fast.’

‘I know, but this is not your hunt. Old ones are hunted more than they hunt.’

‘All my eyes are straight and all my hands are tight.’

‘But they are slow and they must be quick. Once they were quick but now they are slow.’

‘Har-dasha, it is thy comrade who asks thee.’

‘My blood is yours as in all the years; it is only my thought that must seem cruel, old one. I will hunt without you.’

‘Hunt well, Har-dasha, then. I await you always,’ the old creature said, using the ritual formula of acquiescence.

‘Are we going to shoot this goddam whale or not?’ The woman’s voice was shrill. ‘Or are you and that thing going on whistling at each other all night?’

He turned on her savagely. ‘You’re out of this. You’re staying right here where you belong. Put that blaster back on the rack and take off that space-suit and start making food. We’ll be back in half an hour.’

‘Don’t you give me orders, you bum. I can shoot as well as any man and you won’t stop me.’

‘Around here I say what everybody does, and they do it.’ Over her shoulder he could see the Martian hanging up his suit and his throat went dry. ‘If you try to get in that airlock with us we head right back to Venus.’

‘I’m sorry, Martha, you’ll have to do as he says,’ the young fellow said.

The two big Wyndham-Clarke blasters were ready primed and he set them both at maximum, while they stood in the airlock and waited for the air to go. Then the outer door slid into the wall and they were out there in the freedom and the vastness and the fear that was not fear. The stars were very cold and it was black between the stars. There were not many stars, and the black was vast where there were no stars. The stars and the black together were what gave the freedom. Without the stars or without the black there would not have been the freedom, only the vastness, but with the stars and the black you had the freedom as well as the vastness. The stars were few and the light from them was small and cold, and around them there was the black.

He spoke to the young fellow over the suit radio. ‘Can you see him? Toward that big star with the small companion.’

‘Where?’

‘Look where I’m pointing. He hasn’t spotted us yet.’

‘How does he spot us?’

‘Never mind that. Now, listen. Each swoop he makes, give him one shot. Just one. Then go forward on your suit jet as fast as you can. That confuses him more than lateral movement.’

‘You told me.’

‘I’m telling you again. One shot. He homes on your shot. Get ready; he’s seen us; he’s turning.’

The great beautiful phosphorescent shape narrowed as it came head-on to them, then appeared to swell. The xeeb was closing fast, as fast as any he’d known. It was a big, fast xeeb and likely to be a good one. He’d be able to tell for sure after the first swoop. He wanted the xeeb to be a good one for the young fellow’s sake. He wanted the young fellow to have a good hunt with a good, big, fast xeeb.

‘Fire in about fifteen seconds, then jet,’ Philip Hardacre said. ‘And you won’t have too long before his next swoop, so be ready.’

The xeeb closed, and the young fellow’s shot arc’d in. It was too early to be a good shot and it barely flicked the tail end. Philip Hardacre waited as long as he dared and fired toward the hump where the main ganglia were and jetted without waiting to see where he had hit.

It was a good xeeb all right. From the way its phosphorescence had started to pulsate you could tell it had been hit somewhere in the nervous system or what passed for that, but within seconds it had turned and begun another great beautiful graceful swoop on the two men. This time the young fellow held his fire a little longer and got in a good shot near the hump and jetted as he had been told. But then the xeeb dropped in the way they did once in a hundred times and xeeb and man were almost on each other. There was nothing for Philip Hardacre to do but empty his Wyndham-Clarke all at once in the hope that the loosing of so much energy would get the xeeb to change its mind and home on him instead. Then he was jetting forward at top speed and calling over the suit radio to make for the ship at once.

‘It puffed something at me and I lost my blaster,’ came the young fellow’s voice.

‘Make for the ship.’

‘We won’t get there, will we?’

‘We can try. You may have damaged him enough with that last shot to slow him down or spoil his sense of direction,’ Philip Hardacre said. He already knew that it was all over for them. The xeeb was only a few miles above them and beginning to turn for a fresh swoop, moving slower but not slow enough. The ship was above them too in the other direction. This was what you faced every time you hunted xeeb and when it happened at last it was just the end of the hunt and the end of the freedom and the vastness, and they would have had to end some time.

There was a long arc of light from the ship and the xeeb was suddenly brighter than ever before for an instant, and then the brightness went out and there was nothing there.

The Martian had fallen into a crouching position in the airlock and the third Wyndham-Clarke was still in his pincers. The two men waited for the outer door to close and the air to flood in.

‘Why didn’t he put on his suit?’ said the young fellow.

‘There wasn’t time. He had about a minute to save us. A Martian suit takes much longer than that to put on.’

‘What would have got him first, the cold?’

‘Airlessness. They respire quickly. Five seconds at most. Just enough to aim and fire.’ He was quick after all, Philip Hardacre thought.

Inside, the woman was waiting for them. ‘What happened?’

‘He’s dead, of course. He got the xeeb.’

‘Did he have to get himself killed doing it?’

‘There was one weapon on board and one place to use it from,’ Philip Hardacre said. Then his voice went quiet. ‘Why are you still wearing your space-suit?’

‘I wanted to get the feel of it. And you said to take it off.’

‘Why couldn’t you have taken the gun into the airlock?’

Her eyes went dull. ‘I didn’t know how the lock worked.’

‘But Ghlmu did. He could have operated it from in here. And you can shoot, or so you said.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry I like,’ the young fellow said. He didn’t sound like a school professor now, or afraid of her. ‘Sorry brings back that old guy as alive as ever he was, doesn’t it? Sorry is about the best I ever heard. And sorry is something else too. Sorry as all hell is how I feel when I drop you off in Venusport and take the shuttle to Earth by myself. You like Venusport, don’t you? Well, here’s your chance to get lost in it.’

Philip Hardacre finished composing the old Martian’s limbs and appendages and muttered as much as he knew of the prescribed incantation. ‘Forgive me,’ he said.