In Deep (18 page)

Once there had been something of particular interest on this world. No telling what it had been, for that had been some millions of years ago when Mars was a living world. But the Doorway people, a few of them, had come here to observe it. When they were finished, they had gone away, leaving their tents behind, as a man might abandon a crude shelter of sticks and leaves.

And the other things they had left behind them? The cubes, cones, rods, odd shapes, each one beyond price to a man?
Empty cans
, thought Falk;
toothpaste tubes, wrapping paper
.

They had abandoned this city and the million things in it because they were of no value.

The sun was redder, nearer the horizon. Falk looked at the chronometer strapped to the wrist of his suit and found to his surprise that it was more than five hours since he had left Wolfert on Mars.

He had not eaten. He took food out of his pack and looked at the labels on the cans. But he was not hungry; he did not even feel tired.

He watched the lizards outside. They were scurrying around in the plaza now, bringing armloads of junk from the building, packing them into big red boxes. As Falk watched, a curious construction floated into view down at the end of the plaza. It was a kind of airboat, an open shell with two lizards riding it, supported by two winglike extensions with streamlined, down-pointing shapes at their ends.

It drifted slowly until it hovered over the pile of boxes the lizards had gathered. Then a hatch opened in its belly, and a hook emerged at the end of three cords. The lizards on the plaza began slinging loops of cord from their boxes to the hook.

Falk watched them idly. The hook began to rise, dragging the boxes after it, and at the last moment one of the lizards tossed another loop over it.

The new box was heavy; the hook stopped when it took up the slack, and the airboat dipped slightly. Then it rose again, and the hook rose too, until the whole load was ten feet off the ground.

Abruptly one of the three cords snapped; Falk saw it whip through the air, saw the load lurch ponderously to one side, and the airboat dip. Simultaneously the pilot sent the boat down to take up the strain on the remaining cords.

The lizards were scattering. The load struck heavily; and a moment later so did the airboat. It bounced, skidded wildly, and came to rest as the pilot shut off the power.

The lizards crowded around again, and the two in the airboat climbed down for an interminable conference. Eventually they got aboard again, and the boat rose a few feet while the lizards beneath disengaged the hook. Then there was another conference. Falk could see that the doors of the boat’s hatch were closed and had a crumpled look. Evidently they were jammed and could not be opened again.

Finally the boat came down once more, and with much argument and gesticulation the boxes were unpacked and some of their contents reloaded into two boxes, these being hoisted with much effort into the airboat’s cockpit. The rest was left strewn around the plaza.

The airboat lifted and went away, and most of the lizards followed it. One straggler came over for a last look at Falk; he peered and gestured through the wall for a while, then gave it up and followed the rest. The plaza was deserted.

Some time passed, and then Falk saw a pillar of white flame that lifted, with a glint of silver at its tip, somewhere beyond the city, and grew until it arched upward to the zenith, dwindled, and vanished.

So they had spaceships, the lizards. They did not dare use the Doorways, either. Not fit, not fit… too much like men.

Falk went out into the plaza and stood, letting the freshening breeze ruffle his hair. The sun was dropping behind the mountains, and the whole sky had turned ruddy, like a great crimson cape streaming out of the west. Falk watched, reluctant to leave, until the colors faded through violet to gray, and the first stars came out.

It was a good world. A man could stay here, probably, and live his life out in comfort and ease. No doubt there were exotic fruits to be had from those trees; certainly there was water; the climate was good; and Falk thought sardonically . that there could be no dangerous wild beasts, or those!twittering tourists would never have come here.

If all a man wanted was a hiding place, there could be no better world than this. For a moment Falk was strongly tempted. He thought of the cold dead world he had seen and wondered if he would ever find a place as fair as this again.

Also, he knew now that if the Doorway builders still lived, they must long ago have drawn in their outposts. Perhaps they lived now on only one planet, out of all the billions. Falk would die before he found it.

He looked at the rubble the lizards had left in the middle of . the plaza. One box was still filled, but burst open; that was the one that had caused all the trouble. Around it was a child’s litter of baubles—pretty glass toys, red, green, blue, yellow, white.

A lizard,abandoned here by his fellows, would no doubt be happy enough in the end.

With a sigh, Falk turned back to the building. The door opened before him, and he collected his belongings, fastened down his helmet, strapped on his knapsack again.

The sky was dark now, and Falk paused to look up at the familiar sweep of the Milky Way. Then he switched on his helmet light and turned toward the waiting Doorway.

The light fell across the burst box the lizards had left, and Falk saw a hard edge of something thrusting out. It was not the glassy adamant of the Doorway builders; it looked like stone.

Falk stooped and tore the box aside.

He saw a slab of rock, roughly smoothed to the shape of a wedge. On its upper face, characters were incised. They were in English.

With blood pounding in his ears, Falk knelt by the stone. and read what was written there.

THE DOORWAYS STOP THE AGING PROCESS. I WAS 32 WHEN I LEFT MARS, AM HARDLY OLDER NOW THOUGH I HAVE BEEN TRAVELING FROM STAR TO STAR FOR A TIME I BELIEVE CANNOT BE LESS THAN 20 YEARS. BUT YOU MUST KEEP ON. I STOPPED HERE 2 YRS. FOUND MYSELF AGING—HAVE OBSERVED THAT MILKY WAY LOOKS NEARLY THE SAME FROM ALL PLANETS SO FAR VISITED. THIS CANNOT BE COINCIDENCE. BELIEVE THAT DOORWAY TRAVEL IS RANDOM ONLY WITHIN CONCENTRIC BELTS OF STARS & THAT SOONER OR LATER YOU HIT DOORWAY WHICH GIVES ENTRY TO NEXT INNERMOST BELT. IF I AM RIGHT, FINAL DESTINATION IS CENTER OF GALAXY. I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE.

JAMES E. TANNER

NATIVE OF EARTH

Falk stood up, blinded by the glory of the vision that grew in his mind. He thought he understood now why the Doorways were not selective and why their makers no longer used them.

Once—a billion years ago, perhaps—they must have been uncontested owners of the galaxy. But many of their worlds were small planets like Mars—too small to keep their atmospheres and their water forever. Millions of years ago, they must have begun to fall back from these. And meanwhile, Falk thought, on the greater worlds just now cooling, the lesser breeds had arisen: the crawling, brawling things. The lizards. The men. Things not worthy of the stars.

But even a man could learn if he lived long enough, journeyed far enough. James Tanner had signed himself not “TERRAN SPACE CORPS” or “U.S.A.” but “NATIVE OF EARTH.”

So the way was made long, and the way was made hard; and the lesser breeds stayed on their planets. But for a man, or a lizard, who would give up all that he called “life” for knowledge, the way was open.

Falk turned off the beam of his lamp and looked up at the diamond mist of the galaxy. Where would he be a thousand years from today? Standing on that mote of light, or that, or that…?

Not dust, at any rate. Not dust, unmourned, unworthy. He would be a voyager with a destination, and perhaps half his journey would be done.

Wolfert would wait in vain for his return, but it would not matter; Wolfert was happy—if you called that happiness. And on Earth, the mountains would rise and fall long after the question of human survival had been forgotten.

Falk, by that time, perhaps, would be home.

Maxwell and the girl with the astonishing bust had started their weekend on Thursday in Venice. Friday they went to Paris, Saturday to Nice, and on Sunday they were bored. The girl, whose name was Alice, pouted at him across the breakfast table. “Vernon, let’s go someplace else,” she said.

“Sure,” said Maxwell, not too graciously. “Don’t you want your bug eggs?”

“Urgh,” said Alice, pushing them away. “If I ever did, I don’t now. Why do you “have to be so unpleasant in the morning?”

The eggs were insect eggs, all right, but they were on the menu as
oeufs Procyon Thibault
, and three of the half-inch brown spheres cost about one thousand times their value in calories. Maxwell was well paid as a script writer for the North American Unit Ministry of Information—he bossed a gang of six gagmen on the Cosmic Cocktail show—but he was beginning to hate to think about what these five days were costing him.

Maxwell was a small man, sturdily built and not bad-looking, except that he was a little pop-eyed. When he raised his eyebrows, which he did whenever he spoke, his brown forehead creased into accordionlike wrinkles. Some girls found this attractive; those who didn’t were usually impressed by his hand-finished duroplast tunics and forty-credit cummerbunds. He had an unhappy suspicion that Alice, whose most prominent feature has already been mentioned, was one of the latter group.

“Where do you want to go?” asked Maxwell. Their coffee came out of the conveyor, steaming and fragrant, and he sipped his moodily. “Want to run over to Algiers? Or up to Stockholm?”

“No,” said Alice. She leaned forward across the table, and put up one long white hand to keep her honey-colored hair out of her eyes. “You don’t know what I mean. I mean, let’s go to some other planet.”

Maxwell choked slightly and spilled coffee on the table top. “Europe is all right,” Alice was saying with disdain, “but it’s all getting to be just like Chicago. Let’s go some place different for once.”

“And be back by tomorrow noon?” Maxwell demanded. “It’s ten hours even to Proxima; we’d have just time to turn around and get back on the liner.”

Alice dropped her long lashes, contriving to look inviting and sullen at the same time. Not bad at that, Maxwell thought, for ten o’clock in the morning. “You couldn’t get Monday off, I suppose,” she said.

Maxwell’s crew worked two weeks ahead, anyhow; it would only mean digging in harder when he got back. What the hell, why not play sick until Tuesday or Wednesday?

Alice’s lashes rose again, slowly enough for one swift, sure look at Maxwell’s face. Then her eye corners crinkled, and she gave him her A-Number-One smile. “
That
’s why I love you so, Vernie,” she said with satisfaction.

They took the liner to Gamma Tauri IV, the clearing point for the system, then transferred to the interplanet shuttle for Three. Three was an almost undeveloped planet; there were perhaps a hundred cities near the equator, and some mines and plantations in the temperate zones—the rest was nothing but scenery. Maxwell had heard about it from people at the Ministry; he’d been warned to go within a year or so if he went at all—after that it would be as full of tourists as Proxima II.

The scenery was worth the trip. Sitting comfortably on their rented airscooters, stripped to shorts and shirts, with the polarised sunscreens moderating the blazing heat of Gamma Tauri, Maxwell and the girl could look in any horizontal direction and see a thousand square miles of exuberant blue-green foliage.

Two hundred feet below, the tops of gigantic tree ferns waved spasmodically in the breeze. They were following a chain of low mountains that bisected this continent; the treetops sloped away abruptly on either side, showing an occasional glimpse of reddish-brown undergrowth, and merged into a sea of blue-green that became bluer and mistier toward the horizon. A flying thing moved lazily across the clear, cumulus-dotted sky, perhaps half a mile away. Maxwell trained his binoculars on it: it was an absurd lozenge with six pairs of wings—an insect, perhaps; he couldn’t tell. He heard a raucous cry down below, not far away, and glanced down hoping to see one of the carnivores; but the rippling sea of foliage was unbroken.

He watched Alice breathing deeply. Maxwell grinned. Her face was shiny with perspiration and pleasure. “Where to now?” he asked.

The girl peered to the right, where a glint of silver shone at the horizon. “Is that the sea over there?” she asked. “If it is, let’s go look for a nice beach and have our lunch.”

There were no nice beaches; they were all covered with inch-thick pebbles instead of sand; but Alice kept wanting to try the next place. After each abortive approach, they went up to two thousand feet to survey the shore line. Alice pointed and said, “There’s a nice-looking one. Oh! There’s somebody on it.”

Maxwell looked, and saw a tiny figure moving along the shore. “Might be somebody I know,” he said, and focused his binoculars. He saw a broad, naked back, dark against the silvery sea. The man was stooping, looking at something on the beach.

The figure straightened, and Maxwell saw a blazing crest of blond hair, then the strongly modeled nose and chin, as the man turned. “Oh-oh,” he said, lowering the binoculars.

Alice was staring intently through her binoculars. “Isn’t he handsome,” she breathed. “Do you know him?”

“Yes,” said Maxwell. “That’s the Beachcomber. I interviewed him a couple of times. We’d better leave him be.”

Alice kept staring. “Honestly,” she said. “I never saw such a—Look, Vernie, he’s waving at us.”

Maxwell looked again. The Beachcomber’s face was turned up directly toward them. As Maxwell watched, the man’s lips moved unmistakably in the syllables of his name.

Maxwell shortened the range, and saw that the Beachcomber was indeed waving. He also saw something he had missed before: the man was stark naked.

“He’s recognised me,” he said, with mingled emotions. “Now we’ll have to go down.”

Alice took her eyes away from the binoculars for the first time since they had sighted the man. “That’s silly,” she said. “How could he—Vernon, you don’t mean he can see us clearly from that far away?”

Maxwell waved back at the tiny figure and mouthed silently, “Coming right down. Put some pants on, dammit.” He said to Alice, “That’s not all he can do. Weren’t you listening when I said he’s the Beachcomber?”

They started down on a long slant as the little figure below moved toward the jungle’s edge. “The who?” said Alice, looking through the binoculars again.

“Watch where you’re going,” said Maxwell, more sharply than he had intended.

“I’m sorry. Who is he, dear?”

“The Beachcomber. The Man From the Future. Haven’t you seen a newscast for the last five years?”

“I only tune in for the sports and fashions,” Alice said abstractedly. Then her mouth formed an O. “My goodness! Is
he
the one who—”

“The same,” said Maxwell. “The one who gave us the inertialess drive, the anti-friction field, the math to solve the three-body problem, and about a thousand other things. The guy from three million years in the future. And the loneliest man in all creation, probably. This is the planet he showed up on, five years ago, now that I come to think of it. I guess he spends most of his time here.”

“But why?” asked Alice. She looked toward the tiny beach, which was now vacant. Her expression, Maxwell thought, said that there were better uses to which he could put himself.

Maxwell snorted. “Did you ever read—” He corrected himself; Alice obviously never read. “Did you ever see one of the old films about the South Seas? Ever hear of civilised men ‘going native’ or becoming beachcombers?”

Alice said, “Yes,” a trifle uncertainly.

“All right, imagine a man stranded in a universe full of savages—pleasant, harmless savages, maybe, but people who are three million years away from his culture. What’s he going to do?”

“Go native,” said Alice, “or comb beaches.”

“That’s right,” Maxwell told her. “His only two alternatives. And either one is about as bad as the other, from his point of view. Conform to native customs, settle down, marry, lose everything that makes him a civilised man—or just simply go to hell by himself.”

“That’s what he’s doing?”

“Right.”

“Well, but what is he combing those beaches
for?
”

Maxwell frowned. “Don’t be a cretin. These particular beaches have nothing to do with it; he just happens to be on one at the moment. He’s a beachcomber because he lives like a bum—doesn’t do any work, doesn’t see people, just loafs and waits to be old enough to die.”

“That’s awful,” said Alice. “It’s—such a waste.”

“In more ways than one,” Maxwell added drily. “But what do you want? There’s only one place he could be happy—three million years from now—and he can’t go back. He says there isn’t any place to go back to. I don’t know what he means; he can’t explain it any better than that, apparently.”

The Beachcomber was standing motionless by the edge of the forest as their scooters floated down to rest on the pebbly beach. He was wearing a pair of stained, weathered duroplast shorts, but nothing else; no hat to protect his great domed head, no sandals on his feet, no equipment, not even a knife at his belt. Yet Maxwell knew that there were flesh-eaters in the jungle that would gobble a man, outside the force field of his scooter, in about half a second. Knowing the Beachcomber, none of this surprised him. Whether it occurred to Alice to be surprised at any of it, he couldn’t tell. She was eating the Beachcomber with her eyes as he walked toward them.

Maxwell, swearing silently to himself, turned off his scooter’s field and stepped down. Alice did the same.
I only hope she can keep from trying to rape him
, Maxwell thought. Aloud, he said, “How’s it, Dai?”

“All right,” said the Beachcomber. Up close, he ceased to be merely impressive and became a little frightening. He stood over seven feet tall, and there was an incredible strength in every line of him. His clear skin looked resilient but
hard
; Maxwell privately doubted that you could cut it with a knife. But it was the eyes that were really impressive: they had the same disquieting, alien quality as an eagle’s. Dai never pulled his rank on anybody; he “went native” perfectly when he had to, for social purposes; but he couldn’t help making a normal human adult feel like a backward child.

“Dai, I’d like you to meet Alice Zwerling.” The Beachcomber acknowledged the introduction with effortless courtesy; Alice nearly beat herself to death with her eyelashes.

She managed to stumble very plausibly as they walked down to the water’s edge, and put a hand on the giant’s arm for support. He righted her casually with the flat of his hand on her back—at the same time giving a slight push that put her a step or two in advance—and went on talking to Maxwell.

They sat down by the water’s edge, and Dai pumped Maxwell for the latest news on Earth. He seemed genuinely interested; Maxwell didn’t know whether it was an act or not, but he talked willingly and well. The Beachcomber threw an occasional question Alice’s way, just enough to keep her in the conversation. Maxwell saw her gathering her forces, and grinned to himself.

There was a pause in Maxwell’s monologue, and Alice cleared her throat. Both men looked at her politely. Alice said, “Dai, are there really man-eating animals in this jungle? Vernon says so, but we haven’t seen one all the time we’ve been here. And—” Her gaze ran down the Beachcomber’s smooth, naked torso, and she blushed very prettily. “I mean—” she added, and stopped again.

The Beachcomber said, “Sure, there are lots of them. They don’t bother me, though.”

She said earnestly, “You mean—you walk around, like that, in the jungle, and nothing can hurt you?”

“That’s it.”

Alice drove the point home. “Could you protect another person who was with you, too?”

“I guess I could.”

Alice smiled radiantly. “Why, that’s too good to be true! I was just telling Vernon, before we saw you down here, that I wished I could go into the jungle without the scooter, to see all the wild animals and things. Will you take me in for a little walk, Dai? Vernon can mind the scooters—you wouldn’t mind, would you, Vernie?”

Maxwell started to reply, but the Beachcomber forestalled him. “I assure you, Miss Zwerling,” he said slowly, “that it would be a waste of your time and mine.”

Alice blushed again, this time not so prettily. “Just what do you mean?” she demanded.

Dai looked at her gravely. “I’m not quite such a wild man as I seem,” he said. “I always wear trousers in mixed company.” He repeated, with emphasis, “
Always
.”

Alice’s lips grew hard and thin, and the skin whitened around them. Her eyes glittered. She started to say something to the Beachcomber, but the words stuck in her throat. She turned to Maxwell. “I think we’d better go.”

“We just got here,” Maxwell said mildly. “Stick around.”

She stood up. “Are you coming?”

“Nope,” said Maxwell.

Without another word she turned, walked stiffly to her scooter, got in and soared away. They watched the tiny shining speck dwindle and disappear over the horizon.

Maxwell grinned, a little sickly, and looked at the Beachcomber. “She had that coming,” he said. “Not that she’s out anything—she’s got her return ticket.” He put a hand behind him to hoist himself to his feet. “I’ll be going now, Dai. Nice to have—”

“No, stay a while, Vern,” said the giant. “I don’t often see people.” He looked moodily off across the water. “I didn’t spoil anything special for you, I hope?”

“Nothing special,” Maxwell said. “Only my current light o’ love.” The giant turned and stared at him, half frowning.

“What the hell!” said Maxwell disgustedly. “There are plenty of other pebbles on the beach.”

“Don’t say that!” The Beachcomber’s face contorted in a blaze of fury. He made a chopping motion with his forearm. Violent as it was, the motion came nowhere near Maxwell. Something else, something that felt like the pure essence of wrath, struck him and bowled him over, knocking the breath from him.

He sat up, a yard away from the giant, eyes popping foolishly. “Whuhh—” he said.