Authors: Space Pioneers
"I no go back, Dave," he said.
"I come—I stay. You and Frank stay too. No be scared. Sure!
You big boys now.
Strong—smart.
I
smart, too. The Big Man back in White Sands tell big fib. He
say
no job for tracker here. Just now, outside, I see plenty tracks."
It burned me up. Joe was patronizing
me—treating me as if I were a frightened child who had to be soothed. Treating
me the way he had once when a gila monster had scared me out of my wits.
And
he was rattling on with that crazy illusion of his. "Yeah, I see plenty
tracks—old tracks. No wind here. No man tracks. No coyote tracks.
Devil
tracks."
Joe
didn't even look awed. But in his black eyes, beyond the opened view-window of
his oxygen helmet, gleamed something from the lore of his forefathers. It
seemed to satisfy a question in his mind better than all our scientific
sophistication could do for us. What I mean is that it enabled him to adjust
better than we did to complete strangeness.
Right
then something happened to our officer friend's face-presently I was to find
out that his name was Colonel Richard Kopplin. He looked sober, puzzled,
less grouchy—as
if something that had been bothering him
for a long time found support in Joe Whiteskunk's words.
"Hum-mm—devil
tracks," he muttered.
No,
I won't say that Kopplin didn't have plenty of other worries to make him
grumpy and officious. Maybe his own nerves were a bit twisted just by his being
on the Moon. Then he had a lot of responsibility—handling scared and
inexperienced dopes
who
could go batty easily and
throw everything out of kilter. Getting more tunnels dug, more apparatus set up
to draw the constituents of air and water out of rocks, riding herd on experts
to get mineral tests made.
And
it was his job too to see that the astronomical observatory was finished and
the Army fortress. Moreover, he had to deal with civilian interests. Mining companies
and their prospecting and planning—companies who wanted to set up huge atomic
piles and spaceship factories on the Moon or conduct immense
and
dangerous experiments that safety interests
forced off the Earth.
But the worst part of his job was the fact
that we weren't the only nation interested in lunar colonization. That
name-calling, fist-shaking and blame-passing antedated the first hop into
space. Don't make either party the villain too much. It takes two to fight. But
for Colonel Kopplin these facts still made the Moon an additionally unpleasant
post.
Now he cursed under his breath, showing that
he was a fairly human and intelligent guy. "Dammit," he muttered.
"When I was a kid I used to wonder if we of Earth would be the first
beings of the Solar System ever to take a jump into space. Even though there
are no obvious indications of space-travel by extra-terrestrial creatures in
modern times, still there might have been such travel, once. Maybe millions of
years ago . . ."
Kopplin's
muttering died away for a moment. Then, after a pause which seemed designed to
give his words emphasis, he said quietly, "I figured that a trip to the
Moon would give the answer."
"Why?" I asked.
He
looked at me as if I weren't so bright.
"Because, sooner
or later, through the ages, such space-travelers—if they ever existed—would get
to our Moon.
The Moon's been dead for at least a billion years. There
has been no wind and no weather for that much time here. The lightest touch of
anything against the dust on its surface would leave a permanent mark—because
there is no force to rub it out."
That
much was good logic. I nodded. Still, I was skeptical— as to the concrete basis
for this reasoning.
"You're leaving
something out, sir," I said.
"Yes, I am. But I can show you. Maybe
your man here can really help us. It's important enough. Lieutenant Briggs—
take
over."
So Colonel Kopplin, Joe
Whiteskunk, Frank and I went out there under the bleak stars. We all watched
Joe. Odd, but he was top man now—when we had all thought he was going to be
more helpless and out of place here than an infant.
He
looked up at the huge blurry blue-green Earth, which hung almost at zenith,
near the blazing, corona-fringed sun. There was something like awe in his face
for a moment. The low
Lunar
gravity seemed to bother
him some too—his steps were kind of uncertain.
But
quickly facts that he understood as well on the Moon as back home on the ranch
drew his attention. Kopplin had pointed to the ground, which wasn't exactly
ashen here but seemed to consist of lava rock that had been pulverized by some
terrific force.
And
there, in plain view, were faint scrabbling marks, a little like those of a
truck tire or a great millipede. Joe's eyes moved
quickly,
and ours followed his gaze. At a little distance there were other marks of a
different character. Small round indentations—they could have been made with
the end of a pogostick. They could have been made by a thing with a long
stride. For a little way they were spaced evenly, like steps.
"Nothing
to get excited about, I know," Kopplin growled. "Nothing to draw anybody's
certain attention. Still if—"
Joe's
eyes were very intent and searching—still I wouldn't say that he was excited.
"Devil tracks," he said.
"Two kinds.
We
follow, eh?
Out across the valley."
Joe
would have gone at it right then. Maybe that too was part of what made my blood
run cold. I had always figured there was something funny about Joe. The
now
is the only time that exists for him really. For what he does he doesn't
need what we would call determination. He just flows on like a river or a
sandstorm.
I'd
hardly call him stupid. But his intelligence is different. Something about it
is in tune with natural forces. And what do you call that?
Intuition?
Instinct?
Extra-sensory perception?
How should I know! Maybe he has a guardian devil or a terrific stack of luck
that keeps him on the right beam.
Look at those tracks my way—or your way. It
comes out the same, I'll bet. Yeah—I was trying to figure what kinds of
creatures or things or forces could have made those tracks— and how many
million years before. Sure, you and I can make a sort of picture from what we
know about science and other worlds. Living monsters, with ages of logical
culture behind them—or shining robots.
But how about Joe Whiteskunk?
He had no background with which to construct
such a picture—or even to understand its meaning. He just seemed to follow his
nose. What thoughts went on in his head
were
as deep
an enigma as those two kinds of tracks themselves.
Frank
said, "We've got to go back to shelter, Joe.
Too much
civilization.
We gotta rest up."
Well,
we did that for several hours. And Joe studied his space-suit the way he used
to study his rifle and I tried to help him to understand it.
Colonel
Kopplin got together huge packs of equipment for us to carry. Again he
delegated his camp authority to Lieutenant Briggs so that he could go along
with us.
On our shoulders as we started out sat dread.
And its companion, curiosity, magnified to
the point of fascination.
But above and beyond all that was
the great spice of life—high romance.
Who had been here on the Moon so
long before us— and for what basic motive? And why weren't they here, now? Had
they somehow failed, in their vast reaching out, to hold onto what they had
attained? And might we not fail for the same reason?
Skip the details of our progress across the
floor of that tremendous lunar crater. We followed the scrabbled tracks—the
circular ones soon vanished completely. And sometimes there was no spoor at
all. Perhaps a more recent upheaval of dust had blotted them out. But,
following Joe, we were always able to pick up the trail again.
Against the feeble
Lunar
gravity we climbed that vast crater
wall
, locating there a string of handholds—that
were not quite handholds, since they did not comfortably fit our human hands —chipped
out of the glassy rock. We topped the brim of the barrier as the lagging Lunar
Sun crept across the sky. We came down in a congealed inferno of tortured rock
outside Copernicus.
Five
miles out Joe Whiteskunk found trail's end. It was a confused circular patch of
tracks in the dust—as new as yesterday in appearance.
Trampled
markings full of violence and drama—an inconceivably ancient arena for two.
And at the center of it lay the vanquished.
The being's weapon was as new and gleaming as
yesterday.
A small bright tube, which Colonel Kopplin picked
up for us to stare at.
And a little of the aura of the physical
principles by which it had functioned crept into our minds, leaving deeper
enigmas to challenge us, to label our human science the feeble and primitive
groping it is.
The
trigger-button—the tiny but terrifically stout pressure-chamber, in which a
minute droplet of substance that was like that of the Sun's heart could be
produced to yield energy.
Atomic fusion.
Four atoms of hydrogen yielding one of helium.
And the barrel, which must have been lined with pure force to stave
such heat away from weak metal, to direct such a blast of death.
Yet the being who had owned such a weapon had
lost the fight, perhaps to a greater science.
The
eerie corpse lay there. It did not resemble a centipede. Rather, it looked like
a blackened old tree-stump with a thousand roots still contorted with agony.
The spatial dryness of the Moon had sucked the moisture from ancient tissues,
leaving them not only desiccated and harder than oak—but even charred. Beyond
that the preservation was perfect.
"Bad things happen here," Joe said
through his helmet radiophones. Then he just stood stolidly by while the rest
of us proceeded to reach the same conclusion in our involved path of reason.
"The thing with the round tracks left no
further spoor from this point," Frank said. "So it must have
flown—moved above the surface."
"Sure,"
I joined in. "And this fight must have been just a tiny part of something
far bigger." My voice was hoarse with dread and questioning.
Kopplin had been on the Moon far longer than
any of us. So of course he knew far more than we did. "Sure," he
growled. "The Moon is big enough and hard to travel in. It's easy never
even to notice such little details as corpses, tracks, artifacts. But could
anyone ever miss the thousands of
Lunar
craters?
"Volcanoes,
astronomers used to call them. Then the wounds made by vast meteors, crashing
down from space. But one thing tests have shown—even their highest walls still
show a trace of radioactivity, far above the level of natural uranium deposits.
What can that suggest except that they are gigantic bomb-craters?
"What if the Moon was a battleground for
two kinds of beings, from two different worlds—say fifty million years ago? You
know that the gradual lessening of radioactivity in rocks provides a clock for
calculating the age of a stratum. And that's the amount of time you get by
calculation."
Well—I carried the ball from that point. But
Kopplin certainly could have done the same. So could Frank. Only old Joe
Whiteskunk was left out of it.
"The
Asteroid Belt," I said. "Long ago it was figured to be the wreckage
of an exploded planet. Was that explosion a natural phenomenon or was it part
of war—between two planets? And what would be that other planet? It would have
to be a planet smaller than the Earth too—cooling faster, supporting life
sooner,
developing
civilization sooner.
Mars, most likely.
Or maybe a moon of
Jupiter."
My
voice was a whisper. But there wasn't a thing new in what I said. I'd followed
an old track of romancing handed down from stories that had groped at the
unknown long ago. Here, however, the hints of truth were plain—that corpse at
our feet, and that weapon. And the result was sharpened dread.
A thing which became the more terrifying,
because it was personal—because history was on the same track again, set to
repeat itself, for human beings this time. Everybody had read the signs before.
But now, pointed out by a harsh and factual example, it was infinitely more
vivid. It scared the sweat out of your skin.
We
looked toward the east. And a rocket was tracing an inbound path of fire
against the brittle star-curtain. One of
their
rockets—of
that other nation, I mean—our enemy.
"What
do you read in the flight of any such rocket?" Kopplin said.
"Beauty, imperialism, the inevitable urge of all life to
expand as far as it can go, with not even the stars the limit.
It
happened before—starting from Mars and from this Asteroid world. But then all
the romance and glory turned to death and silence, by fury and its own
scientific triumphs. Like some great flowering plant that never
blossomed."
But then my brother Frank looked a little
brighter. "Maybe that's good," he said.
"For
our pals, the enemy—and for us.
An example, a lesson,
the pointing out of an error in brutal terms.
A warning not to do what
other hopefuls did before us.
"Ever think that fear, instead of
misplaced courage, could be the key to progress by way of caution and common
sense? Lord, it's the one chance! For us—for them! Otherwise maybe all there'll
be is another bigger and better Asteroid Belt, littered with everything from
mountains to bobby pins!"
"Sure,
Frank," I put in. "The path to future glory is a scary
tightrope."
We started marching again. It was too late in
that two-weeks-long
Lunar
day to start back to Camp
Copernicus. So we went forward. Twice we put up an airtight heat-proof tent in
which to eat and sleep. And when sunset came it didn't stop us. We had our
lights for night-work—and the glory of the Earth-shine over that maddening
desolation.
But we didn't go mad—we
were too frightened. With the disappearance of the Sun, the temperature of the
surrounding ground dropped from higher than the boiling point of water to
something a shade above absolute zero. But what did that matter to us in our
insulated space-suits?
Joe
Whiteskunk led us on and finally picked up another trail, which led to a
half-buried shelter of metal and a whole bunch of other ancient murders.
Stump-like corpses—all
except
one. That one had
belonged to the kind of creature that made the circular tracks. Its skin was
black
horn,
its form was somewhat less human than a
two-year-old's smeary drawing of a man. The prints its fingers—or
tentacle-tips—would have made were crosshatched instead of spiral.
"Which is which, I
wonder?" Frank asked.
I
answered as well as anybody could just then. "Mars still exists, at least.
It must have won. It must have been stronger. These things with the round feet
were stronger. But the Martians must have lost too. Anyway, they haven't been
around for a long time either."
We
were exploring that shelter. It was hardly what a man could inhabit
comfortably. The Asteroidians didn't have much use for rooms as we understand
them. They lived like bugs— in sort of chinks between plates of metal, not ten
inches apart.
That's
other-world stuff—which shows about how close we'd be in physical needs to the
people of most alien planets. And there were a thousand different small
articles, the uses of which we could never name. Imagine yourself a Martian,
mulling over a mess of combs, shaving brushes, boot-polish and the like—maybe
you'll understand what I mean.
Of course we found treasure. No, I'm not
talking about simple stuff like gold and jewels or refined uranium—rather a
wealth of ideas. Maybe the best was the little rod the Martian had— it was
wonderfully simplified and seemed to be both a weapon of terrible power as well
as a means of flying.
But
the Asteroidians had their inventions, too.
Wonderful compact
calculation machines.
A thin filtering fabric that
could purify and reoxygenate air.
An automatic control
device that would have worked well on our spaceships.
And dozens of