What's It Like Out There? Read online

  Another one said, "This world's grim and lonely, and mys- terious. We don't know much about it yet. So far, nobody's seen anything living but the lichens that Expedition One reported, but there might be anything here."

  Miss Graham asked me, "Was that all there was, just lichens?"

  "That, and two or three kinds of queer cactus things," I said. "And rock and sand. That's all."

  As I read more of those little blue letters, I found that now that Jim was gone I knew him better than I ever had. There was something about him I'd never suspected. He was romantic inside. We hadn't suspected it, he was always so quiet and slow, but now I saw that all the time he was more romantic about the thing we were doing than any of us.

  He hadn't let on. We'd have kidded him, if he had. Our name for Mars, after we got sick of it, was the Hole. We always talked about it as the Hole. I could see now that Jim had been too shy of our kidding to ever let us know that he glamorized the thing in his mind.

  "This was the last one I got from him before his sickness," Miss Graham said.

  That one said, "I'm starting north tomorrow with one of the mapping expeditions. We'll travel over country no hu- man has ever seen before."

  I nodded. "I was on that party myself. Jim and I were on the same half-track,"

  "He was thrilled by it, wasn't he, Sergeant?" I wondered. I remembered that trip, and it was hell. Our job was simply to run a preliminary topographical survey, checking with Geigers for possible uranium deposits. It wouldn't have been so bad, if the sand hadn't started to blow.

  It wasn't sand like Earth sand. It was ground to dust by billions of years of blowing around that dry world. It got inside your breathing mask, and your goggles, and the en- gines of the half-tracks, in your food and water and clothes. There was nothing for three days but cold, and wind, and sand.

  Thrilled? I'd have laughed at that before. But now I didn't know. Maybe Jim had been, at that. He had lots of pa- tience, a lot more than I ever had. Maybe he glamorized that hellish trip into wonderful adventure on a foreign world.

  "Sure, he was thrilled," I said. "We all were. Anybody would be."

  Miss Graham took the letters back, and then said, "You had Martian sickness too, didn't you?"

  I said, yes, I had, just a touch, and that was why I'd had to spend a stretch in reconditioning hospital when I got back.

  She waited for me to go on, and I knew I had to. "They don't know yet if it's some sort of virus or just the effect of Martian conditions on Earthmen's bodies. It hit forty per cent of us. It wasn't really so badfever and dopiness, mostly."

  "When Jim got it, was he well cared for?" she asked. Her lips were quivering a little.

  "Sure, he was well cared for. He got the best care there was," I lied.

  The best care there was? That was a laugh. The Brst cases got decent care, maybe. But they'd never figured on so many coming down. There wasn't any room in our little hospitalthey just had to stay in their bunks in the alumi- num Quonsets when it hit them. All our doctors but one were down, and two of them died.

  We'd been on Mars six months when it hit us, and the loneliness had already got us down. All but four of our rockets had gone back to Earth, and we were alone on a dead world, our little town of Quonsets huddled together under that hateful, brassy sky, and beyond it the sand and rocks that went on forever.

  You go up to the North Pole and camp there, and find out how lonely that is. It was worse out there, a lot worse. The first excitement was gone long ago, and we were tired, and homesick in a way nobody was ever homesick beforewe wanted to see green grass, and real sunshine, and women's faces, and hear running water; and we wouldn't until Ex- pedition Three came to relieve us. No wonder guys blew their tops out there. And then came Martian sickness, on top of it.

  "We did everything for him that we could," I said. Sure we had. I could still remember Walter and me tramp- ing through the cold night to the hospital to try to get a medic, while Breck stayed with him, and how we couldn't get one.

  I remember how Walter had looked up at the blazing sky as we tramped back, and shaken his fist at the big green star of Earth.

  "People up there are going to dances tonight, watching shows, sitting around in warm rooms laughing! Why should good men have to die out here to get them uranium for cheap power?"

  "Can it," I told him tiredly. "Jim's not going to die. A lot of guys got over it."

  The best care there was? That was real funny. All we could do was wash his face, and give him the pills the medic left, and watch him get weaker every day till he died.

  "Nobody could have done more for him than was done," I told Miss Graham.

  "I'm glad," she said. "I guessit's just one of those things." When I got up to go she asked me if I didn't want to see Jim's room. They'd kept it for him just the same, she said. I didn't want to, but how are you going to say so? I went up with her and looked and said it was nice. She opened a big cupboard. It was full of neat rows of old magazines.

  "They're all the old science fiction magazines he read when he was a boy," she said. "He always saved them." I took one out. It had a bright cover, with a space ship on it, not like our rockets but a streamlined thing, and the rings of Saturn in the background.

  When I laid it down, Miss Graham took it up and put it back carefully into its place in the row, as though somebody was coming back who wouldn't like to find things out of order.

  She insisted on driving me back to Omaha, and out to the airport. She seemed sorry to let me go, and I suppose it was because I was the last real tie to Jim, and when I was gone it was all over then for good.

  I wondered if she'd get over it in time, and I guessed she would. People do get over things. I supposed she'd marry some other nice guy, and I wondered what they'd do with Jim's things-with all those old magazines nobody was ever coming back to read.

  I would never have stopped at Chicago at all if I could have got out of it, for the last person I wanted to talk to anybody about was Walter Millis. It would be too easy for me to make a slip and let out stuff nobody was supposed to know.

  But Walters father had called me at the hospital, a couple of times. The last time he called, he said he was having Brock's parents come down from Wisconsin so they could see me, too, so what could I do then but say, yes, I'd stop. But I didn't like it at all, and I knew I'd have to be careful. Mr. Millis was waiting at the airport and shook hands with me and said what a big favor I was doing them all, and how he appreciated my stopping when I must be anxious to get back to my own home and parents.

  "That's all right," I said. "My dad and mother came out to the hospital to see me when I first got back." He was a big, fine-looking important sort of man, with a little bit of the stuffed shirt about him, I thought. He seemed friendly enough, but I got the feeling he was looking at me and wondering why I'd come back and his son Walter hadn't. Well, I couldn't blame him for that.

  His car was waiting, a big car with a driver, and we started north through the city. Mr, Millis pointed out a few things to me to make conversation, especially a big atomic- power station we passed.

  "It's only one of thousands, strung all over the world," he said. "They're going to transform our whole economy. This Martian uranium will be a big thing, Sergeant." I said, yes, I guessed it would.

  I was sweating blood, waiting for him to start asking about Walter, and I didn't know yet just what I could tell him. I could get myself in Dutch plenty if I opened my big mouth too wide, for that one thing that had happened to Expedition Two was supposed to be strictly secret, and we'd all been briefed on why we had to keep our mouths shut.

  But he let it go for the time being, and just talked other stuff. I gathered that his wife wasn't too well, and that Wal- ter had been their only child. I also gathered that he was a very big shot in business, and dough-heavy. I didn't like him, Walter I'd liked plenty, but his old man seemed a pretty pompous person, with his heavy busi- ness talk.

  He wanted to know how soon I thought Martian ura- ni
um would come through in quantity, and I said I didn't think it'd be very soon.

  "Expedition One only located the deposits," I said, "and Two just did mapping and setting up a preliminary base. Of course, the thing keeps ex~nding, and I hear Four will have a hundred rockets. But Mars is a tough setup." Mr. Millis said decisively that I was wrong, that the world was power-hungry, that it would be pushed a lot faster than I expected.

  He suddenly quit talking business and looked at me and asked, "Who was Walter's best friend out there?" He asked it sort of apologetically. He was a stuffed shirt; but all my dislike of him went away then.

  "Breck Jergen," I told him. "Breck was our sergeant. He sort of held our squad together, and he and Walter cottoned to each other from the first."

  Mr. Millis nodded, but didn't say anything more about it. He pointed out the window at the distant lake and said we were almost to his home.

  It wasn't a home, it was a big mansion. We went in and he introduced me to Mrs. Millis. She was a limp, pale- looking woman, who said she was glad to meet one of Walter's friends. Somehow I got the feeling that even though he was a stuffed shirt, he felt it about Walter a lot more than she did.

  He took me up to a bedroom and said that Brock's parents would arrive before dinner, and that I could get a little rest before then.

  I sat looking around the room. It was the plushiest one I'd ever been in, and, seeing this house and the way these people lived, I began to understand why Walter had blown his top more than the rest of us.

  He'd been a good guy, Walter, but high-tempered, and I could see now he'd been a little spoiled. The discipline at training base had been tougher on him than on most of us, and this was why.

  I sat and dreaded this dinner that was coming up, and looked out the window at a swimming pool and tennis court, and wondered if anybody ever used them now that Walter was gone. It seemed a queer thing for a fellow with a setup like this to go out to Mars and get himself killed. I took the satin cover off the bed so my shoes wouldn't dirty it, and lay down and closed my eyes, and wondered what I was going to tell them. The trouble was, I didn't know what story the officials had given them.

  "The Commanding Officer regrets to inform you that your son was shot down like a dog…"

  They'd never got any telegram like that. But just what line had been handed them? I wished I'd had a chance to check on that.

  Damn it, why didn't all these people let me alone? They started it all going through my mind again, and the psychos had told me I ought to forget it for a while, but how could I? It might be better just to tell them the truth. After all, Walter wasn't the only one who'd blown his top out there. In that grim last couple of months, plenty of guys had gone around sounding off.

  Expedition Three isn't coming!

  We're stuck, and they don't care enough about us to send help!

  That was the line of talk. You heard it plenty, in those days. You couldn't blame the guys for it, either. A fourth of us down with Martian sickness, the little grave markers clotting up the valley beyond the ridge, rations getting thin, medicine running low, everything running low, all of us watching the sky for rockets that never came. There'd been a little hitch back on Earth, Colonel Nichols explained. (He was our C.O. now (BSPGeneral Rayen had died.) There was a little delay, but the rockets would be on their way soon, we'd get relief, we just had to hold on. Holding onthat's what we were doing. Nights we'd sit in the Quonset and listen to Lassen coughing in his bunk, and it seemed like wind-giants, cold-giants, were bawling and laughing around our little huddle of shelters.

  "Damn it, if they're not coming, why don't we go home?" Walter said. "We've still got the four rocketsthey could take us all back."

  Breck's serious face got graver. "Look, Walter, there's too much of that stuff being talked around. Lay off."

  "Can you blame the men for talking it? We're not story- book heroes. If they've forgotten about us back on Earth, why do we just sit and take it?"

  "We have to," Breck said. "Three will-come."

  I've always thought that it wouldn't have happened, what did happen, if we hadn't had that falSe alarm. The one that set the whole camp wild that night, with guys shouting,

  "Three's here! The rockets landed over west of Rock Ridgel" Only when they charged out there, they found they hadn't seen rockets landing at all, but a little shower of tiny meteors burning themselves up as they fell.

  It was the disappointment that did it, I think. I can't say for sure, because that same day was the day I conked out with Martian sickness, and the ffoor came up and hit me and I woke up in the bunk, with somebody giving me a hypo, and my head big as a balloon. I wasn't clear out, it was only a touch of it, but it was enough to make everything foggy, and I didn't know about the mutiny that was boiling up until I woke up once with Breck leaning over me and saw he wore a gun and an M.P. brassard now.

  When I asked him how come, he said there'd been so much wild talk about grabbing the four rockets and going home that the M;P. force had been doubled and Nichols had issued stern warnings.

  "Walter?" I said, and Breck nodded. "He's a leader and he'll get hit with a court-martial when this is over. The blasted idiot!"

  "I don't get ithe's got plenty of guts, you know that," I said.

  "Yes, but he can't take discipline, he never did take it very well, and now that the squeeze is on he's blowing up. Well, see you later, Frank."

  I saw him later, but not the way I expected. For that was the day we heard the faint echo of shots, and then the alarm siren screaming, and men running, and half-tracks starting up in a hurry. And when I managed to get out of my bunk and out of the hut, they were all going toward the big rockets, and a corporal yelled to me from a jeep, "That's blown it! The damn fools swiped guns and tried to take over the rockets and make the crews fly 'em homel" I could still remember the sickening slidings and bounc- ings of the jeep as it took us out there, the milling little crowd under the looming rockets, milling around and hiding something on the ground, and Major Weiler yelling himself hoarse giving orders.

  When I got to see what was on the ground, it was seven or eight men and most of them dead. Walter had been shot right through the heart. They told me later it was because he'd been the leader, out in front, that he got it first of the mutineers.

  One M.P. was dead, and one was sitting with red all over the middle of his uniform, and that one was Breck, and they were bringing a stretcher for him now.

  The corporal said, "Hey, that's Jergen, your squad leader!"

  And I said, "Yes, that's him." Funny how you can't talk when something hits youhow you just say words, like

  "Yes, that's him." Breck died that night without ever regaining conscious- ness, and there I was, still half sick myself, and with Lassen dying in his bunk, and five of us were all that was left of Squad Fourteen, and that was that.

  How could H.Q. let a thing like that get known? A fine advertisement it would be for recruiting more Mars expedi- tions, if they told how guys on Two cracked up and did a crazy thing like that. I didn't blame them for telling us to keep it top secret. Anyway, it wasn't something we'd want to talk about.

  But it sure left me in afine spot now, a sweet spot. I was going down to talk to Brock's parents and Walter's parents, and they'd want to know how their sons died, and I could tell them, "Your sons probably killed each other, out there." Sure, I could tell them that, couldn't I? But what was I going to tell them? I knew H.Q. had reported those casual- ties as "accidental deaths," but what kind of accident? Well, it got late, and I had to go down, and when I did, Breck's parents were there. Mr. Jergen was a carpenter, a tall, bony man with level blue eyes like Breck's. He didn't say much, but his wife was a little woman who talked enough for both of them.

  She told me I looked just like I did in the pictures of us Breck had sent home from training base. She said she had three daughters tootwo of them married, and one of the married ones living in Milwaukee and one out on the Coast. She said that she'd named Breck after a c
haracter in a book by Robert Louis Stevenson, and I said I'd read the book in high school.

  "It's a nice name," I said.

  She looked at me with bright eyes and said, "Yes. It was a nice name."

  That was a fine dinner. They'd got everything they thought I might like, and all the best, and a maid served it, and I couldn't taste a thing I ate.

  Then afterward, in the big living room, they all just sort of sat and waited, and I knew it was up to me. I asked them if they'd had any details about the accident, and Mr. Millis said. No, just "accidental death" was all they'd been told.

  Well, that made it easier. I sat there, with all four of them watching my face, and dreamed it up.

  I said, "It was one of those one-in-a-million things. You see, more little meteorites hit the ground on Mars than here, because the air's so much thinner it doesn't burn them up so fast. And one hit the edge of the fuel dump and a biinch of little tanks started to blow. I was down with the sickness, so I didn't see it, but I heard all about it."

  You could hear everybody breathing, it was so quiet as I went on with my yarn.

  "A couple of guys were knocked out by the concussion and would have been burned up if a few fellows hadn't got in there fast with foamite extinguishers. "They kept it away from the big tanks, but another little tank let go, and Breck and Walter were two of the fellows who'd gone in, and they were killed instantly."

  When I'd got it told, it sounded corny to me and I was afraid they'd never believe it. But nobody said anything, un- til Mr. Millis let out a sigh and said, "So that was it. Well. >. well, if it had to be, it was mercifully quick, wasn't it?" I said, yes, it was quick.

  "Only, I can't see why they couldn't have let us know. It doesn't seem fair."

  I had an answer for that. "It's hush-hush because they don't want people to know about the meteor danger. That's why."

  Mrs. Millis got up and said she wasn't feeling so well, and would I excuse her and she'd see me in the morning. The rest of us didn't seem to have much to say to each other, and nobody objected when I went up to my bedroom a little later.