What's It Like Out There? Read online

  What's It Like Out There?

  Edmond Hamilton

  A young astronaut has returned from an expedition tasked with collecting resources from Mars. He suffers through visits with the grieving families in order to deliver the letters of his dead comrades; always, he lies to the families about the manner of their loved ones’ deaths. Although he wishes to tell the families the grim truth — that Mars is often unheroic, senseless, gruesome, and that their loved ones died in exactly that manner — he realizes that it would be futile. The people need heroes, something to believe in. They also need the resources of Mars to provide the power for the luxuries to which they’ve become accustomed. His own homecoming in Ohio is a farce. He stands before the hopeful crowd, essentially the entire town, studying their eager faces. Although he wants to chastise them for sacrificing good men for their comfort, he gives them what they want. He knows that he will always feel alienated from society, always feel old.

  Edmond Hamilton

  What's It Like Out There?

  I hadn't wanted to wear my uniform when I left the hos- pital, but I didn't have any other clothes there and I was too glad to get out to argue about it. But as soon as I got on the local plane I was taking to Los Angeles, I was sorry I had it on.

  People gawked at me and began to whisper. "The stew- ardess gave me a special big smile. She must have spoken to the pilot, for he came back and shook hands, and said, "Well, I guess a trip like this is sort of a comedown for you." A little man came in, looked around for a seat, and took the one beside me. He was a fussy, spectacled guy of fifty or sixty, and he took a few minutes to get settled. Then he looked at me, and stared at my uniform and at the little brass button on it that said "TWO."

  "Why," he said, "you're one of those Expedition Two men!" And then, as though he'd only just figured it out,

  "Why, you've been to Mars I"

  "Yeah," I said. "I was there." He beamed at me in a kind of wonder. I didn't like it, but his curiosity was so friendly that I couldn't quite resent it.

  "Tell me," he said, "what's it like out there?" The plane was lifting* and I looked out at the Arizona desert sliding by close underneath.

  "Different," I said. "It's different."

  The answer seemed to satisfy him completely. "I'll)ust bet it is," he said. "Are you going home, Mr… "

  "Haddon. Sergeant Frank Haddon."

  "You going home, Sergeant?"

  "My home's back in Ohio," I told him. "I'm going in to L.A. to look up some people before I go home."

  "Well, that's fine. I hope you have a good time, Sergeant. You deserve it. You boys did a great job out there. Why, I read in the newspapers that after the U.N, sends out a cou- ple more expeditions, we'll have cities out there, and regular passenger lines, and all that."

  "Look," I said, "that stuff is for the birds. You might as well build cities down there in Mojave, and have them a lot closer. There's only one reason for going to Mars now, and that's uranium."

  I could see he didn't quite believe me. "Oh, sure," he said, "I know that's important too, the uranium we're all using now for our power stationsbut that isn't all, is it?"

  "It'll be all, for a long, long time," I said.

  "But look, Sergeant, this newspaper article said…" I didn't say anything more. By the time he'd finished tell- ing about the newspaper article, we were coming down into L.A. He pumped my hand when we got out of the plane.

  "Have yourself a time. Sergeant! You sure rate it. I hear a lot of chaps on Two didn't come back."

  "Yeah," I said. "I heard that."

  I was feeling shaky again by the time I got to down- town L.A. I went in a bar and had a double bourbon and it make me feel a little better.

  I went out and found a cabby and asked him to drive me out to San Gabriel. He was a fat man with a broad red face.

  "Hop right in, buddy," he said. "Say, you're one of those Mars guys, aren't you?"

  I said, "That's right."

  "Well, well," he said. "Tell me, how was it out there?"

  "It was a pretty dull grind, in a way," I told him.

  "I'll bet it was!" he said, as we started through traffic.

  "Me, I was in the Army in World War Two, twenty years ago. That's just what it was, a dull grind nine tenths of the time. I guess it hasn't changed any."

  "This wasn't any Army expedition," I explained. "It was a United Nations one, not an Army onebut we had officers and rules of discipline like the Army."

  "Sure, it's the same thing," said the cabby. "You don't need to tell me what it's like, buddy. Why, back there in 'forty-two, or was it 'forty-three?anyway, back there I re- member that…"

  I leaned back and watched Huntington Boulevard slide past. The sun poured in on me and seemed very hot, and the air seemed very thick and soupy. It hadn't been so bad up on the Arizona plateau, but it was a little hard to breathe down here.

  The cabby wanted to know what address in San Gabriel. I got the little packet of letters out of my pocket and found the one that had "Martin Valinez" and a street address on the back. I told the cabby and put the letters back into my pocket.

  I wished now that I'd never answered them.

  But how could I keep from answering when Joe Valinez' parents wrote to me at the hospital? And it was the same with Jim's girl, and Walter's family. I'd had to write back, and the first thing I knew I'd promised to come and see them, and now if I went back to Ohio without doing it I'd feel like a heel. Right now, I wished I'd decided to be a heel.

  The address was on the south side of San Gabriel, in a section that still had a faintly Mexican tinge to it. There was a little frame grocery store with a small house beside it, and a picket fence around the yard of the house; very neat, but a queerly homely place after all the slick California stucco. I went into the little grocery, and a tall, dark man with quiet eyes took a look at me and called a woman's name in a low voice and then came around the counter and took my hand.

  "You're Sergeant Haddon," he said. "Yes. Of course. We've been hoping you'd come."

  His wife came in a hurry from the back. She looked a little too old to be Joe's mother, for Joe had been just a kid; but then she didn't look so old either, but just sort of worn. She said to Valinez, "Please, a chair. Can't you see he's tired? And just from the hospital."

  I sat down and looked between them at a case of canned peppers, and they asked me how I felt, and wouldn't I be glad to get home, and they hoped all my family were well. They were gentlefolk. They hadn't said a word about Joe, just waited for me to say something. And I felt in a spot, for I hadn't known Joe well, not jreally. He'd been moved into our squad only a couple of weeks before take-off, and since he'd been our first casualty, I'd never got to know him much. I finally had to get it over with, and all I could think to say was, "They wrote you in detail about Joe, didn't they?" Valinez nodded gravely. "Yesthat he died from shock within twenty-four hours after take-off. The letter was very nice."

  His wife nodded too. "Very nice," she murmured. She looked at me, and I guess she saw that I didn't know quite what to say, for she said, "You can tell us more about it. Yet you must not if it pains you."

  I could tell them more. Oh, yes, I could tell them a lot more, if I wanted to. It was all clear in my mind, like a movie film you run over and over till you know it by heart. I could tell them all about the take-off that had killed their son. The long lines of us, uniformed backs going up into Rocket Four and all the other nineteen rocketsthe lights flaring up there on the plateau, the grind of machinery and blast of whistles and the inside of the big rocket as we climbed up the ladders of its center well.

  The movie was ruiming again in my mind, clear as crystal, and I was back in Cell Fourteen of Rocket Four, with
the minutes ticking away and the walls quivering every time one of the other rockets blasted off, and us ten men in our hammocks, prisoned inside that odd-shaped windowless metal room, waiting. Waiting, till that big, giant hand came and smacked us down deep into our recoil springs, crush- ing the breath out of us, so that you fought to breathe, and the blood roared into your head, and your stomach heaved in spite of all the pills they'd given you, and you heard the giant laughing, b-r-room! b-r-r-roomi b-r-r-oomi Smash, smash, again and again, hitting us in the guts and cutting our breath, and someone being sick, and someone else sobbing, and the b-r-r-oom! b-r-r-oomi laughing as it killed us; and then the giant quit laughing, and quit slap- ping us down, and you could feel your sore and shaky body and wonder if it was still all there.

  Walter Millis cursing a blue streak in the hammock under- neath me, and Breck Jergen, our sergeant then, clambering painfully out of his straps to look us over, and then through the voices a thin, ragged voice saying uncertainly, "Breck, I think I'm hurt…"

  Sure, that was their boy Joe, and there was blood on his lips, and he'd had itwe knew when we first looked at him that he'd had it. A handsome kid, turned waxy now as he held his hand on his middle and looked up at us. Expedition One had proved that take-off would hit a certain percentage with internal injuries every time, and in our squad, in our little windowless cell, it was Joe that had been hit. If only he'd died right off. But he couldn't die right off, he had to lie in the hammock all those hours and hours. The medics came and put a strait-jacket around his body and doped him up, and that was that, and the hours went by. And we were so shaken agd deathly sick ourselves that we didn't have the sympathy for him we should have hadnot till he started moaning and begging us to take the jacket off. Finally Walter Millis wanted to do it, and Breck wouldn't allow it, and they were arguing and we were listening when the moaning stopped, and there was no need to do anything about Joe Valinez any more. Nothing but to call the medics, who came into our little iron prison and took him away. Sure, I could tell the Valinezes all about how their Joe died, couldn't I?

  "Please," whispered Mrs. Valinez, and her husband looked at me and nodded silently.

  So I told them.

  I said, "You know Joe died in space. He'd been knocked out by the shock of take-off, and he was unconscious, not feeling a thing. And then he woke up, before he died. He didn't seem to be feeling any pain, not a bit. He lay there, looking out the window at the stars. They're beautiful, the stars out there in space, like angels. He looked, and then he whispered something and lay back and was gone." Mrs. Valinez began to cry softly. "To die out there, look- ing at stars like angels…"

  I got up to go, and she didn't look up. I went out the door of the little grocery store, and Valinez came with me. He shook my hand. "Thank you, Sergeant Haddon. Thank you very much."

  "Sure," I said.

  I got into the cab. I took out my letters and tore that one into bits. I wished to God I'd never got it. I wished I didn't have any of the other letters I still had.

  I took the early plane for Omaha. Before we got there I fell asleep in my seat, and then I began to dream, and that wasn't good.

  A voice said, "We're coming down."

  And we were coming down, Rocket Four was coming down, and there we were in our squad cell, all of us strapped into our hammocks, waiting and scared, wishing there was a window so we could see out, hoping our rocket wouldn't be the one to crack up, hoping none of the rockets cracked up, but if one does, don't let it be ours…

  "We're coming down… " Coming down, with the blasts starting to boom again un- derneath us, hitting us hard, not steady like at take-olf, but blast-blast-blast, and then again, blast-blast. Breck's voice, calling to us from across the cell, but I couldn't hear for the roaring that was in my ears between blasts. No, it was not in my ears, that roaring came from the wall beside me: we had hit atmosphere, we were coming in. The blasts in lightning succession without stopping, crash- crash-crash-crash-crashi Mountains fell on me, and this was it, and don't let it be ours, please, God, don't let it be ours….

  Then the bump and the blackness, and finally somebody yelling hoarsely in my ears, and Breck Jergen, his face deathly white, leaning over me.

  "Unstrap and get out, Frank! All men out of hammocks. all men out!"

  We'd landed, and we hadn't cracked up, but we were half dead and they wanted us to turn out, right this minute, and we couldn't.

  Breck yelling to us, "Breathing masks on! Masks on! We've got to go out!"

  "My God, we've just landed, we're torn to bits, we can't!"

  "We've got to I Some of the other rockets cracked up in landing and we've got to save whoever's still living in them! Masks on! Hurry!"

  We couldn't, but we did. They hadn't given us all those months of discipline for nothing. Jim Clymer was already on his feet, Walter was trying to unstrap underneath me, whis- tles were blowing like mafl somewhere and voices shouted hoarsely.

  My knees wobbled under me as I hit the floor. Young Las- sen, beside me, tried to say something and then crumpled up. Jim bent over him, but Breck was at the door yelling,

  "Let him go I Come on I" The whistles screeching at us all the way down the lad- ders of the well, and the mask clip hurting my nose, and down at the bottom a disheveled officer yelling at us to get out and join Squad Five, and the gangway reeling under us.

  Cold. Freezing cold, and a wan sunshine from the shrunken little sun up there in the brassy sky, and a rolling plain of ocherous red sand stretching around us, sand that slid away under our feet as our squads followed Captain Wall toward the distant metal bulk that lay oddly canted and broken in a little shallow valley.

  "Come on, menhurryl Hurryl"

  Sure, all of it a dream, the dreamlike way we walked with our lead-soled shoes dragging our feet back after each step, and the voices coming through the mask resonators muffled and distant.

  Only not a dream, but a nightmare, when we got up to the canted metal bulk and saw what had happened to Rocket Seventhe metal hull ripped like paper, and a few men crawling out of the wreck with blood on them, and a gurgling sound where shattered tanks were emptying, and voices whimpering, "First aid! First aidi"

  Only it hadn't happened, it hadn't happened yet at all, for we were still back in Rocket Four coming in, we hadn't landed yet at all but we were going to any minute.

  "We're coming down… " I couldn't go through it all again. I yelled and fought my hammock straps and woke up, and I was in my plane seat and a scared hostess was a foot away from me, saying,

  "This is Omaha, Sergeant. We're coming down." They were all looking at me, all the other passengers, and I guessed I'd been talking in the dream1 still had the sweat down my back like all those nights in the hospital when I'd keep waking up.

  I sat up, and they all looked away from me quick and pretended they hadn't been staring.

  We came down to the airport. It was midday, and the hot Nebraska sun felt good on my back when I got out. I was lucky, for when I asked at the bus depot about going to Cuffington, there was a bus all ready to roll. A farmer sat down beside me, a big young fellow who offered me cigarettes and told me it was only a few hours' ride to Cuffington.

  "Your home there?" he asked.

  "No, my home's back in Ohio," I said. "A friend of mine came from there. Name of Clymer."

  He didn't know him, but he remembered that one of the town boys had gone on that second expedition to Mars.

  "Yeah," I said. "That was Jim." He couldn't keep it in any longer. "What's it like out there, anyway?"

  I said, "Dry. Terrible dry."

  "Ill bet it is," he said. "To tell the truth, it's too dry here, this year, for good wheat weather. Last year it was fine. Last year.. "

  Cuffington, Nebraska, was a wide street of stores, and other streets with trees and old houses, and yellow wheat fields all around as far as you could see. It was pretty hot, and I was glad to sit down iu the bus depot while I went through the thin little phone book.

&nbs
p; There were three Graham families in the book, but the first one I called was the right oneMiss lla Graham. She talked fast and excited, and said she'd come right over, and I said I'd wait in front of thi-' bus depot.

  I stood underneath the awning, looking down the quiet street and thinking that it sort of explained why Jim Cly- mer had always been such ~ quiet, slow-moving sort of guy. The place was sort of relaxed, like he'd been. A coupe pulled up, and Miss Graham opened the door. She was a brown-haired girl, not especially good-looking, but the kind you think of as a nice girl, a very nice girl. She said, "You look so tired that I feel guilty now about asking you to stop."

  "1m all right," I said. "And it's no trouble stopping over a couple of places on my way back to Ohio."

  As we drove across the little town, I asked her if Jim hadn't had any family of his own here.

  "His parents were killed in a car crash years ago," Miss Graham said. "He lived with an uncle on a farm outside Grandview, but they didn't get along, and Jim came into town and got a job at the power station."

  She added, as we turned a comer, "My mother rented him a room. That's how we got to know each other. That's how wehow we got engaged."

  "Yeah, sure," I said.

  It was a big square house with a deep front porch, and some trees around it. I sat down in a wicker chair, and Miss Graham brought her mother out. Her mother talked a little about Jim, how they missed him, and how she declared he'd been just like a son.

  When her mother went back in, Miss Graham showed me a little bunch of blue envelopes, "These were the letters I got from Jim. There weren't very many of them, and they weren't very long."

  "We were only allowed to send one thirty-word message every two weeks," I told her. "There were a couple of thou- sand of us out there, and they couldn't let us jam up the message transmitter all the time."

  "It was wonderful how much Jim could put into just a few words," she said, and handed me some of them. I read a couple. One said, "I have to pinch myself to realize that I'm one of the first Earthmen to stand on an alien world. At night, in the cold, I look up at the green star that's Earth and can't quite realize I've helped an age-old dream come true."