Microcosmic God (51 page)

“Mm-m-m.”

“Put them on. Snap into it!”

An hour later the
Stoutfella
grated on a sandy clearing not far from a red and rocky bluff. The choking atmosphere of Mercury swirled about the portholes. Nudnick climbed out of the pilot seat and tore a pair of fiber boots out of a locker. He had already ripped his buttons off, tossed his wrist radio and identification ring on the chart table. “Come on!” he snapped.

“You … we’re not going out there?”

“You’re damn right we are!”

Hughie looked at him. If this old man was willing—He shrugged, picked up a magazine. It seemed as if he—stroked it. Then he tossed it aside and strode with Nudnick into the airlock.

As the inner gate shut them out of the little world that the ship afforded, Nudnick clapped him on the back. “Chin up, kiddo,” he said warmly. “Now listen—do exactly as I tell you. When we get outside,
move as fast as you can toward that bluff. The Martians won’t shoot as long as they think we have any information. Na—no questions—there isn’t time! Listen. It’s hot out there. As hot as the oven my dear old mother used to bake ten-egg cakes in. The air is not so good, but we can breathe it—for a while. Long enough, I guess. Ready?”

The outer gate slid back and they plunged out.

It was hot. In seconds acrid dust was packing on Hughie’s skin, washing away in veritable gushes of sweat, packing the pores again. He saw the reason for taking off all metal clothing. He had left his identification ring on; it began to sear his hand. He tore it off, and blistered flesh with it.

The air lacerated his throat, stung his eyes. Somehow he knew the location of three things—the red bluff, the hovering Martian ship, and the professor. He pounded on. Once he tripped, went down on one knee. His breeches burst into flame. Nudnick saw and helped him slap it out. Inside the charred edges of cloth he caught a glimpse of his own kneecap, a tiny spot of bone amid a circle of cooked flesh, where his knee had ground into the burning sand.

Nudnick tugged at his elbow. “How far do you think we are?” he wheezed.

Hughie suddenly realized that Nudnick’s old eyes couldn’t see very far in this kind of heat; he had to be eyes for two people now. “Ship—hundred and fifty—yards—”

“Not—far enough! Go—on!”

They struggled on, helping each other, hindering each other. The ground rose sharply; Nudnick stopped. “Beginning of … bluff … far … enough—” He began coughing.

Hughie held him up until he had finished. He began to understand. He had heard vague stories about Martian torture. Nudnick would rather die this way, then. They could have starved slowly in the ship. Maybe this was better—

Nudnick’s shrill, dust-choked whisper reached him. “Martians?”

Hughie put one hand over his eyes and peered through the fingers. The Martian ship had settled down beside the
Stoutfella
. The port swung open, three figures, two tall and lanky, one short and
shriveled. “Three … coming … two Martians … Bjornsen.” Talking was torture. Breathing was pulling living fire into the lungs. He heard a noise and looked down. Nudnick was clutching him and making the noise. Slowly he realized that the old man was laughing.

They lurched toward the three figures, clinging to each other. The two Martians grasped them, and just in time, or they would have fallen and died.

“Of all the crazy damn things to do!” shrilled Bjornsen. In spite of the blasting breeze, the insufferable heat, the old gestures returned to him, and he rubbed his hands together in that familiar, despised gesture.

Nudnick forced his eyes open and stared at the councilman worriedly, and then turned to each of the Martians. They were wilting a little bit in the heat, but their grip was still strong. Bjornsen spoke a few squeaky words in the Martian tongue, and the five of them began to struggle toward the ships.

Suddenly the Martian who had Hughie’s arm began to cry out in a piercing, ululating whine. It was quite the most ghastly sound the boy had ever heard; he shuddered in spite of the heat and thrust at the creature. To his utter amazement the Martian slumped to the ground, arched his back as it began to scorch, screamed deafeningly and then lay still. Nudnick laughed cacklingly again and shoved at his Martian, tripping him at the same time. The second Martian stumbled, regained his balance, and then began screaming. In a matter of seconds he fell. He took longer, but died also—

Bjornsen stood in front of them, watching the Martians, and then, shouting agonized curses, began a stumbling run toward his ship.

“Damn it, he’s going to make it!” cried Nudnick; and stooping, he caught up a hot stone and hurled it.

Straight as an explosive pellet it flew, and caught Bjornsen between his narrow shoulders. Bjornsen threw up his hands, trying wildly to keep his feet. Gibbering crazily, Nudnick threw another stone. It missed by twenty feet. Hughie caught the old man as he fell exhausted. When next he looked at Bjornsen, the councilman was, down on his knees, his hand clutching at the sill of the Martians’ airlock. He sagged, writhed, and died there.

Hughie stood for five seconds, tottering; then he shook his head, bent and let the scientist’s limp body fall across his shoulder. It took him an eternity to straighten up, and then eternities to locate his nearby ship and begin that long, long fifty-foot journey. Hughie knew later that if it had been five—three—feet more, he could not possibly have made it. But somehow he did—somehow he tumbled the old man into the lock, pitched forward on top of him. He scrabbled weakly around, found the lock control, pressed it.

Hughie screamed when he came out of it. Then he opened his eyes and saw that he wasn’t in that fiery desert. He closed them again and realized that his knee hurt terribly. Then Nudnick was beside him, bathing his face, talking.

“Good stuff, kid. Fix you up in no time. Heh! Long chance just for a few tons of prosydium, eh? Well, we’ll get it now. No one else around. No one else around.”

“Bjornsen?”

“Dead. Remember? Like the Martians.”

“Martians.” The words brought horror into the heat-reddened young face. He raised his head and Nudnick slipped another pillow under it. “What happened to those Martians?”

Nudnick grinned. “They died of ignorance, son, and let that be a lesson to you.” Hughie just stared. “You see, for generations now, Martians have lived on Earth and Earthmen on Mars. It made ’em forget something—that one little fact I was talking about before we landed. Water-hoarders, Hughie.
Martians can’t sweat!
You see? A human can live beside a steak that’s cooking, because he sweats. The evaporation cools him down. A Martian can’t stand that kind of heat—he cooks like a steak!”

“But … Bjornsen wasn’t—”

“Ah. You’re wrong there. Bjornsen
was!
A freak, Hughie. Look at Martians. Unemotional—logical—well, isn’t that Bjornsen? Y’know, when I walked in on him when he was ganging up on you at the Institute, I heard him rub his hands together. I knew I’d heard it somewhere before, but I don’t know just where. But the other day when you said he was inhuman, it clicked. Bjornsen didn’t have no
mamma and no poppa, kiddo. He came out of a Martian biochemical laboratory, or I miss my guess. Clever fellers, those Martians. Trained him from birth for that job. A key man in the middle of my little old institute. There may be more like him. I’ll see to that. Heh! I won’t be the first boss that’s told his employees, ‘Work up a sweat or get canned!’ ”

Hughie at last managed to grin a little. Nudnick kept on talking happily. “That knee’ll be all right in a couple weeks. By that time we’ll hook on to the prosydium. You’re fixed for life, fella. Ah—hey, I’ve got a confession to make to you.”

Hughie turned weak, amused eyes on him. The old man wagged his head. “Yep. About that prosydium. Didn’t you wonder how I knew about it? I’ll tell you. I was coming from Mars last year on a Martian liner. Very elegant. Humidifiers in every room. Radio. Recorded music. Lots of apparatus built into the staterooms. Would’ve delighted the heart of Satan Strong. Anyway, I got messing around. I … er—” He paused guiltily, then went on. “I sort of tore out some connections and spot-welded some busbars. Built me a dandy detectograph. Located that prosydium as we passed the edge of the Belt. Sheer luck. Spotted it, by golly, right from a stateroom in a Martian ship!”

Hughie laughed admiringly. “You old son of a gun,” he said disrespectfully. “And you sneered at Satan Strong!”

“Me?” The old man shook his head and stood up. “Why should I sneer at Satan Strong? I
like
Satan Strong. I ought to. I
write
those stories!”

M
Y PILOT WAS ANNOYED
with me, which was understandable, since he was an earnest young man and regretted the substitution of a Canadian medical officer for three fifty-pound bombs. Bombs would do his work over Germany, he reasoned; and they would do it without observing him and his gunner, without making constant notations in a military blank book. But the war office wanted these observations of R.A.F. lads under stress, and to us, the war office was at the top of the heap.

I wasn’t subjected to his annoyance long, more’s the pity. The youngster guided us skillfully through the black over Europe to within forty miles of our objective and then swallowed a German tracer that puffed in through the cowling. He screamed and threw up his hands, and we went into a dive with benefit of engines. A Me-110 whipped past with a sound for all the world like a mighty belch, and the right auxiliary petrol tank spewed flames all over the fuselage. It all happened bloody fast, and there was nothing to be done, so I went over the wall. Pulling my ripcord a few seconds later, I saw the pale gleam of the gunner’s ‘chute moving about me in a great circle. That’s the way it was, because I couldn’t see that I was spinning—and I couldn’t see anything but his ‘chute, and the meteor that had been a slim blue-gray bomber. It crashed tremendously a couple of minutes later, and the
whump
of the concussion jerked at my shroud lines. The intensity of the dead lad’s purpose must have carried him through, for the flaming carcass carried its basket of eggs right into the middle of a crowded railroad yard, as I saw by the flash and the flame.

Then Archy opened up on us, and I thought that was just about the outside edge. Five hundred guineas’ worth of H.E. and shrapnel for two men dangling from parachutes. Myself, I might try my aim with an automatic rifle at a Hun in a ‘chute. I used to be a pretty
fair duck hunter. But shrapnel? Deuced unsporting. I had the nasty feeling that the gunner and I had been reduced to a bet on a bottle of beer between two bored Jerries.

Archy shared half a dozen rounds with us. I was too busy spilling wind out of the silk to see how the other chap made out. He was taking his chances on riding it straight down. I miscalculated my altitude, what with Jerry banging away and all that spilling, and I came down pretty fast. Landed with a bit of a bump and broke both of my legs. The umbrella dragged me cross country because I couldn’t roll over, and the jarring compounded one of the fractures. I lay down then, when the silk fouled on a sapling, and wished that the fall had knocked me out. Just by crazy chance, the gunner came down within twenty feet of me. His ‘chute seemed to set him down like a thistle seed. The breeze quit and let him fold up gently, but not before I saw that shrapnel had taken his shoulders out from under his head. Then the great white ‘chute billowed down over both of us.

They treated us pretty well at the camp. I call it a camp because it’s known as a camp to the press, but it was really a castle. Polish. We had the run of two-thirds of the place, including a wide garden. Keep your eyes away from the walls and you’d think you were in England, though no Englishman would let his garden run riot the way this one was. This one had been so well planted that it was all the better for its neglect. I used to clump about it after my legs had knit well enough to bear my weight. Jerry had done more than was humanly possible for that right leg. A less skilled medico would have amputated and thereby given me more of a limp but a lot less pain. I suppose it’s better to have your own limbs in any condition, but there were times when I didn’t think so.

The whole set-up had all the elements of being bearable. They fed us adequately, and anybody can get used to
ersatz
coffee made from tulip bulbs and turnips. They allowed us half a dozen Tommies to keep the rooms and mess hall clean, and they were decent about letting packages from home get through. Well, the German military is that way, anyhow. There’s a new government in Berlin, a new Germany in men’s minds and on the maps; but it hasn’t killed
the traditionalism of the armed forces. To the Prussian mind, an officer is an officer, be he German, English or Guatemalan, and as such he is entitled to respect and subordination. He may be a prisoner, but if he is, no man without rank may give him orders. The party would like to do something about that, but the party is a little too shrewd to interfere with the military during wartime. Wait till it’s over; then the factions will blossom out. Then the army will have its chance to even up a few scores—and it will, it will.

Richter was a party man. Richter had reached the ripe old age of twenty-two and had six devoted and bloody years of party work behind him. At sixteen he had reported his uncle and aunt to the Nazis because they had made some derogatory remarks about the leader. Richter was in an ideal spot to spy on them since they were supporting him. He made it his business to investigate the family of his childhood sweetheart, found that the girl was one-eighth Jewish, held the fact over her head until he was tired of her, and then had her sent to a camp equipped with sundry abrasions and a condition associated with so much bitterness that not even mother love would override it. He was a charter member of the
Jugend;
he had worn his brown shirt with pride and plain clothes with poisonous efficiency. He had clung to the
Landwehr
as long as he could, on the theory that his loyal talents were of more use to the party in spying on his associates than in pulling a more honest trigger. He was in the army now, but he had been sent to the prison to check up on its administration; a fact that he made no bones about. He was tall and broad, with rotten teeth and eyes set too close together, and I do believe he bleached his hair.