R Is for Rocket Page 11

"Gone!"

  "His last book gone. Someone on Earth just now burned it."

  "God rest him. Nothing of him left now. For what are we but books, and when those are gone, nothing's to be seen."

  A rushing sound filled the sky.

  They cried out, terrified, and looked up. In the sky, dazzling it with sizzling fire clouds, was the rocket! Around the men on the seashore lanterns bobbed; there was a squealing and a bubbling and an odor of cooked spells. Candle-eyed pumpkins lifted into the cold clear air. Thin fingers clenched into fists and a witch screamed from her withered mouth:

  "Ship, ship, break, fall!

  Ship, ship, burn all!

  Crack, fake, shake, melt!

  Mummy dust, cat pelt!"

  "Time to go," murmured Blackwood. "On to Jupiter, on to Saturn or Pluto."

  "Run away?" shouted Poe in the wind. "Never!"

  "I'm a tired old man!"

  Poe gazed into the old man's face and believed him. He climbed atop a huge boulder and faced the ten thousand gray shadows and green lights and yellow eyes on the hissing wind.

  "The powders!" he shouted.

  A thick hot smell of bitter almond, civet, cumin, worm-seed and orris!

  The rocket came down - steadily down, with the shriek of a damned spirit! Poe raged at it! He flung his fists up and the orchestra of heat and smell and hatred answered in symphony! Like stripped tree fragments, bats flew upward! Burning hearts, flung like missiles, burst in bloody fireworks on the singed air. Down, down, relentlessly down, like a pendulum the rocket came. And Poe howled, furiously, and shrank back with every sweep and sweep of the rocket cutting and ravening the air! All the dead sea seemed a pit in which, trapped, they waited the sinking of the dread machinery, the glistening ax; they were people under the avalanche!

  "The snakes!" screamed Poe.

  And luminous serpentines of undulant green hurtled toward the rocket. But it came down, a sweep, a fire, a motion, and it lay panting out exhaustions of red plumage on the sand, a mile away.

  "At it!" shrieked Poe. "The plan's changed! Only one chance! Run! At it! At it! Drown them with our bodies! Kill them!"

  And as if he had commanded a violent sea to change its course, to suck itself free from primeval beds, the whirls and savage gouts of fire spread and ran like wind and rain and stark lightning over the sea sands, down empty river deltas, shadowing and screaming, whistling and whining, sputtering and coalescing toward the rocket which, extinguished, lay like a clean metal torch in the farthest hollow. As if a great charred caldron of sparkling lava had been overturned, the boiling people and snapping animals churned down the dry fathoms.

  "Kill them!" screamed Poe, running.

  The rocket men leaped out of their ship, guns ready. They stalked about, sniffing the air like hounds. They saw nothing. They relaxed.

  The captain stepped forth last. He gave sharp commands. Wood was gathered, kindled, and a fire leapt up in an instant. The captain beckoned his men into a half circle about him.

  "A new world," he said, forcing himself to speak deliberately, though he glanced nervously, now and again, over his shoulder at the empty sea. "The old world left behind. A new start. What more symbolic than that we here dedicate ourselves all the more firmly to science and progress." He nodded crisply to his lieutenant. "The books."

  Firelight limned the faded gilt titles: The Willows, The Outsider, Behold This Dreamer, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Land of Oz, Pellucidar, The Land That Time Forgot, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the monstrous names of Machen and Edgar Allan Poe and Cabell and Dunsany and Blackwood and Lewis Carroll; the names, the old names, the evil names.

  "A new world. With a gesture, we burn the last of the old."

  The captain ripped pages from the books. Leaf by seared leaf, he fed them into the fire.

  A scream!

  Leaping back, the men stared beyond the firelight at the edges of the encroaching and uninhabited sea.

  Another scream! A high and wailing thing, like the death of a dragon and the thrashing of a bronzed whale left gasping when the waters of a leviathan's sea drain down the shingles and evaporate.

  It was the sound of air rushing in to fill a vacuum, where, a moment before, there had been something!

  The captain neatly disposed of the last book by putting it into the fire.

  The air stopped quivering.

  Silence!

  The rocket men leaned and listened.

  "Captain, did you hear it?"

  "No."

  "Like a wave, sir. On the sea bottom! I thought I saw something. Over there. A black wave. Big. Running at us."

  "You were mistaken."

  "There, sir!"

  "What?"

  "See it? There! The city! Way over! That green city near the lake! It's splitting in half. It's falling!"

  The men squinted and shuffled forward.

  Smith stood trembling among them. He put his hand to his head as if to find a thought there. "I remember. Yes, now I do. A long time back. When I was a child. A book I read. A story. Oz, I think it was. Yes, Oz. The Emerald City of Oz . . ."

  "Oz?"

  "Yes, Oz, that's what it was. I saw it just now, like in the story. I saw it fall."

  "Smith!"

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Report to the ship's doctor."

  "Yes, sir!" A brisk salute.

  "Be careful."

  The men tiptoed, guns alert, beyond the ship's aseptic light to gaze at the long sea and the low hills.

  "Why," whispered Smith, disappointed, "there's no one here at all, is there? No one here at all."

  The wind blew sand over his shoes, whining.

  HERE THERE BE TYGERS

  "You have to beat a planet at its own game," said Chatter-ton. "Get in and rip it up, kill its snakes, poison its animals, dam its rivers, sow its fields, depollinate its air, mine it, nail it down, hack away at it, and get the blazes out from under when you have what you want. Otherwise, a planet will fix you good. You can't trust planets. They're bound to be different, bound to be bad, bound to be out to get you, especially this far out, a billion miles from nowhere, so you get them first. Tear their skin off, I say. Drag out the minerals and run away before the nightmare world explodes in your face. That's the way to treat them."

  The rocket ship sank down toward planet 7 of star system 84. They had traveled millions upon millions of miles; Earth was far away, her system and her sun forgotten, her system settled and investigated and profited on, and other systems rummaged through and milked and tidied up, and now the rockets of these tiny men from an impossibly remote planet were probing out to far universes. In a few months, a few years, they could travel anywhere, for the speed of their rocket was the speed of a god, and now for the ten-thousandth time one of the rockets of the far-circling hunt was feathering down toward an alien world.

  "No," said Captain Forester. "I have too much respect for other worlds to treat them the way you want to, Chatterton. It's not my business to rape or ruin, anyway, thank God. I'm glad I'm just a rocket man. You're the anthropologist-mineralogist. Go ahead, do your mining and ripping and scraping. I'll just watch. I'll just go around looking at this new world, whatever it is, however it seems. I like to look. All rocket men are lookers or they wouldn't be rocket men. You like to smell new airs, if you're a rocket man, and see new colors and new people if there are new people to see, and new oceans and islands."

  "Take your gun along," said Chatterton.

  "In my holster," said Forester.

  They turned to the port together and saw the green world rising to meet their ship. "I wonder what it thinks of us?" said Forester.

  "It won't like me," said Chatterton. "I'll see to it it won't like me. And I don't care, you know, I'm out for the money. Land us over there, will you, Capt
ain; that looks like rich country if I ever saw it."

  It was the freshest green color they had seen since childhood.

  Lakes lay like clear blue water droplets through the soft hills; there were no loud highways, signboards or cities. It's a sea of green golf links, thought Forester, which goes on forever. Putting greens, driving greens, you could walk ten thousand miles in any direction and never finish your game. A Sunday planet, a croquet-lawn world, where you could lie on your back, clover in your lips, eyes half shut, smiling at the sky, smelling the grass, drowse through an eternal Sabbath, rousing only on occasion to turn the Sunday paper or crack the red-striped wooden ball through the wicket.

  "If ever a planet was a woman, this one is."

  "Woman on the outside, man on the inside," said Chatterton. "All hard underneath, all male iron, copper, uranium, black sod. Don't let the cosmetics fool you."

  He walked to the bin where the Earth Drill waited. Its great screw-snout glittered bluely, ready to stab seventy feet deep and suck out corks of earth, deeper still with extensions into the heart of the planet. Chatterton winked at it. "We'll fix your planet, Forester, but good."

  "Yes, I know you will," said Forester, quietly.

  The rocket landed.

  "It's too green, too peaceful," said Chatterton. "I don't like it." He turned to the captain. "We'll go out with our rifles."

  "I give orders, if you don't mind."

  "Yes, and my company pays our way with millions of dollars of machinery we must protect; quite an investment."

  The air on the new planet 7 in star system 84 was good. The port swung wide. The men filed out into the greenhouse world.

  The last man to emerge was Chatterton, gun in hand.

  As Chatterton set foot to the green lawn, the earth trembled. The grass shook. The distant forest rumbled. The sky seemed to blink and darken imperceptibly. The men were watching Chatterton when it happened.

  "An earthquake!"

  Chatterton's face paled. Everyone laughed.

  "It doesn't like you, Chatterton!"

  "Nonsense!"

  The trembling died away at last.

  "Well," said Captain Forester, "It didn't quake for us, so it must be that it doesn't approve of your philosophy."

  "Coincidence," Chatterton smiled weakly. "Come on now, on the double, I want the Drill out here in a half hour for a few samplings."

  "Just a moment." Forester stopped laughing. "We've got to clear the area first, be certain there're no hostile people or animals. Besides, it isn't every year you hit a planet like this, very nice; can you blame us if we want to have a look at it?"

  "All right." Chatterton joined them. "Let's get it over with."

  They left a guard at the ship and they walked away over fields and meadows, over small hills and into little valleys. Like a bunch of boys out hiking on the finest day of the best summer in the most beautiful year in history, walking in the croquet weather where if you listened you could hear the whisper of the wooden ball across grass, the click through the wicket, the gentle undulations of voices, a sudden high drift of women's laughter from some ivy-shaded porch, the tinkle of ice in the summer tea pitcher.

  "Hey," said Driscoll, one of the younger crewmen, sniffing the air. "I brought a baseball and bat; we'll have a game later. What a diamond!"

  The men laughed quietly in the baseball season, in the good quiet wind for tennis, in the weather for bicycling and picking wild grapes.

  "How'd you like the job of mowing all this?" asked Driscoll.

  The men stopped.

  "I knew there was something wrong!" cried Chatterton. "This grass; it's freshly cut!"

  "Probably a species of dichondra; always short."

  Chatterton spat on the green grass and rubbed it in with his boot. "I don't like it, I don't like it. If anything happened to us, no one on Earth would ever know. Silly policy: if a rocket fails to return, we never send a second rocket to check the reason why."

  "Natural enough," explained Forester. "We can't waste time on a thousand hostile worlds, fighting futile wars. Each rocket represents years, money, lives. We can't afford to waste two rockets if one rocket proves a planet hostile. We go on to peaceful planets. Like this one."

  "I often wonder," said Driscoll, "what happened to all those lost expeditions on worlds we'll never try again."

  Chatterton eyed the distant forest. "They were shot, stabbed, broiled for dinner. Even as we may be, any minute. It's time we got back to work, Captain 1"

  They stood at the top of a little rise.

  "Feel," said Driscoll, his hands and arms out loosely. "Remember how you used to run when you were a kid, and how the wind felt. Like feathers on your arms. You ran and thought any minute you'd fly, but you never quite did."

  The men stood remembering. There was a smell of pollen and new rain drying upon a million grass blades.

  Driscoll gave a little run. "Feel it, by God, the wind. You know, we never have really flown by ourselves. We have to sit inside tons of metal, away from flying, really. We've never flown like birds fly, to themselves. Wouldn't it be nice to put your arms out like this - " He extended his arms. "And run." He ran ahead of them, laughing at his idiocy. "And fly!" he cried.

  He flew.

  Time passed on the silent gold wristwatches of the men standing below. They stared up. And from the sky came a high sound of almost unbelievable laughter.

  "Tell him to come down now," whispered Chatterton. "He'll be killed."

  Nobody heard. Their faces were raised away from Chatterton; they were stunned and smiling.

  At last Driscoll landed at their feet. "Did you see me? I flew!"

  They had seen.

  "Let me sit down, oh, Lord, Lord." Driscoll slapped his knees, chuckling. "I'm a sparrow, I'm a hawk, God bless me. Go on, all of you, try it!"

  "It's the wind, it picked me up and flew me!" he said, a moment later, gasping, shivering with delight.

  "Let's get out of here." Chatterton started turning, slowly in circles, watching the blue sky. "It's a trap, it wants us all to fly in the air. Then it'll drop us all at once and kill us. I'm going back to the ship."

  "You'll wait for my order on that," said Forester.

  The men were frowning, standing in the warm-cool air, while the wind sighed about them. There was a kite sound in the air, a sound of eternal March.

  "I asked the wind to fly me," said Driscoll. "And it did!"

  Forester waved the others aside. "I'll chance it next. If I'm killed, back to the ship, all of you."

  "I'm sorry, I can't allow this, you're the captain," said Chatterton. "We can't risk you." He took out his gun. "I should have some sort of authority or force here. This game's gone on too long; I'm ordering us back to the ship."

  "Holster your gun," said Forester, quietly.

  "Stand still, you idiot!" Chatterton blinked now at this man, now at that. "Haven't you felt it? This world's alive, it has a look to it, it's playing with us, biding its time."

  "I'll be the judge of that," said Forester. "You're going back to the ship, in a moment, under arrest, if you don't put up that gun."

  "If you fools won't come with me, you can die out here. I'm going back, get my samples, and get out."

  "Chatterton!"

  "Don't try to stop me!"

  Chatterton started to run. Then, suddenly, he gave a cry.

  Everyone shouted and looked up.

  "There he goes," said Driscoll.

  Chatterton was up in the sky.

  Night had come on like the closing of a great but gentle eye. Chatterton sat stunned on the side of the hill. The other men sat around him, exhausted and laughing. He would not look at them, he would not look at the sky, he would only feel of the earth, and his arms and his legs and his body,
tightening in on himself.

  "Oh, wasn't it perfect!" said a man named Koestler.

  They had all flown, like orioles and eagles and sparrows, and they were all happy.

  "Come out of it, Chatterton, it was fun, wasn't it?" said Koestler.

  "It's impossible." Chatterton shut his eyes, tight, tight "There's only one way for it to do it; it's alive. The air's alive. Like a fist it picked me up. Any minute now, it can kill us all. It's alive."

  "All right," said Koestler, "say it's alive. And a living thing must have purpose. Suppose the purpose of this world is to make us happy."

  As if to add to this, Driscoll came flying up, canteens in each hand. "I found a creek, tested and found pure water, wait'll you try it!"

  Forester took a canteen, nudged Chatterton with it, offering a drink. Chatterton shook his head and drew hastily away. He put his hands over his face. "It's the blood of this planet. Living blood. Drink that, put that inside and you put this world inside you to peer out your eyes and listen through your ears. No thanks!"

  Forester shrugged and drank.

  "Wine!" he said.

  "It can't be!"

  "It is! Smell it, taste it! A rare white wine!"

  "French domestic." Driscoll sipped his.

  "Poison," said Chatterton.

  They passed the canteens around.

  They had idled on through the gentle afternoon, not wanting to do anything to disturb the peace that lay all about them. They were like very young men in the presence of great beauty, of a fine and famous woman, afraid that by some word, some gesture, they might turn her face away, avert her loveliness and her kindly attentions. They had felt the earthquake that had greeted Chatterton, and they did not want earthquake. Let them enjoy this Day After School Lets Out, this fishing weather. Let them sit under the shade trees or walk on the tender hills, but let them drill no drillings, test no testings, contaminate no contaminations.

  They found a small stream which poured into a boiling water pool. Fish, swimming in the cold creek above, fell glittering into the hot spring and floated, minutes later, cooked, to the surface.

  Chatterton reluctantly joined the others, eating.

  "It'll poison us all. There's always a trick to things like this. I'm sleeping in the rocket tonight. You can sleep out if you want. To quote a map I saw in medieval history: 'Here there be tygers.' Some time tonight when you're sleeping, the tigers and cannibals will show up."

  Forester shook his head. "I'll go along with you, this planet is alive. It's a race itself. But it needs us to show off to, to appreciate its beauty. What's the use of a stage full of miracles if there's no audience?"

  But Chatterton was busy. He was bent over, being sick.

  "I'm poisoned! Poisoned!"

  They held his shoulders until the sickness passed. They gave him water. The others were feeling fine.

  "Better eat nothing but ship's food from now on," advised Forester. "It'd be safer."

  "We're starting work right now." Chatterton swayed, wiping his mouth. "We've wasted a whole day. I'll work alone if I have to. I'll show this infernal place!"

  He staggered away toward the rocket.