Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (53 page)

‘You’ll have to write it down,’ she simpered, holding out the slate. ‘I’ve been deaf this last twenty years.’

Crysteel and Danstor looked at each other in dismay. This was a completely unexpected snag, for the only written characters they had ever seen were television programme announcements, and they had never fully deciphered those. But Danstor, who had an almost photographic memory, rose to the occasion. Holding the chalk very awkwardly, he wrote a sentence which, he had reason to believe, was in common use during such breakdowns in communication.

As her mysterious visitors walked sadly away, old Mrs Tomkins stared in baffled bewilderment at the marks on her slate. It was some time before she deciphered the characters – Danstor had made several mistakes – and even then she was little the wiser.

TRANSMISSIONS WILL BE RESUMED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

It was the best that Danstor could do; but the old lady never did get to the bottom of it.

They were little luckier at the next house they tried. The door was answered by a young lady whose vocabulary consisted largely of giggles, and who eventually broke down completely and slammed the door in their faces. As they listened to the muffled, hysterical laughter, Crysteel and Danstor began to suspect, with sinking hearts, that their disguise as normal human beings was not as effective as they had intended.

At Number 3, on the other hand, Mrs Smith was only too willing to talk – at 120 words to the minute in an accent as impenetrable as Sam Higginsbotham’s. Danstor made his apologies as soon as he could get a word in edgeways, and moved on.

‘Doesn’t
anyone
talk as they do on the radio?’ he lamented. ‘How do they understand their own programmes if they all speak like this?’

‘I think we must have landed in the wrong place,’ said Crysteel, even his optimism beginning to fail. It sagged still further when he had been mistaken, in swift succession, for a Gallup Poll investigator, the prospective Conservative candidate, a vacuum-cleaner salesman, and a dealer from the local black market.

At the sixth or seventh attempt they ran out of housewives. The door was opened by a gangling youth who clutched in one clammy paw an object which at once hypnotised the visitors. It was a magazine whose cover displayed a giant rocket climbing upward from a crater-studded planet which, whatever it might be, was obviously not the Earth. Across the background were the words: ‘Staggering Stories of Pseudo-Science. Price 25 cents.’

Crysteel looked at Danstor with a ‘Do you think what I think?’ expression which the other returned. Here at last, surely, was someone who could understand them. His spirits mounting, Danstor addressed the youngster.

‘I think you can help us,’ he said politely. ‘We find it very difficult to make ourselves understood here. You see, we’ve just landed on this planet from space and we want to get in touch with your government.’

‘Oh,’ said Jimmy Williams, not yet fully returned to Earth from his vicarious adventures among the outer moons of Saturn. ‘Where’s your spaceship?’

‘It’s up in the hills; we didn’t want to frighten anyone.’

‘Is it a rocket?’

‘Good gracious no. They’ve been obsolete for thousands of years.’

‘Then how does it work? Does it use atomic power?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Danstor, who was pretty shaky on physics. ‘Is there any other kind of power?’

‘This is getting us nowhere,’ said Crysteel, impatient for once. ‘We’ve got to ask
him
questions. Try and find where there are some officials we can meet.’

Before Danstor could answer, a stentorian voice came from inside the house.

‘Jimmy! Who’s there?’

‘Two … men,’ said Jimmy, a little doubtfully. ‘At least, they look like men. They’ve come from Mars. I always said that was going to happen.’

There was the sound of ponderous movements, and a lady of elephantine bulk and ferocious mien appeared from the gloom. She glared at the strangers, looked at the magazine Jimmy was carrying, and summed up the situation.

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!’ she cried, rounding on Crysteel and Danstor. ‘It’s bad enough having a good-for-nothing son in the house who wastes all his time reading this rubbish, without grown men coming along putting more ideas into his head. Men from Mars, indeed! I suppose you’ve come in one of those flying saucers!’

‘But I never mentioned Mars,’ protested Danstor feebly.

Slam! From behind the door came the sound of violent altercation, the unmistakable noise of tearing paper, and a wail of anguish. And that was that.

‘Well,’ said Danstor at last. ‘What do we try next? And why did he say we came from Mars? That isn’t even the nearest planet, if I remember correctly.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Crysteel. ‘But I suppose it’s natural for them to assume that we come from some close planet. They’re going to have a shock when they find the truth. Mars indeed! That’s even worse than here, from the reports I’ve seen.’ He was obviously beginning to lose some of his scientific detachment.

‘Let’s leave the houses for a while,’ said Danstor. ‘There must be some more people outside.’

This statement proved to be perfectly true, for they had not gone much further before they found themselves surrounded by small boys making incomprehensible but obviously rude remarks.

‘Should we try and placate them with gifts?’ said Danstor anxiously. ‘That usually works among more backward races.’

‘Well, have you brought any?’

‘No, I thought you—’

Before Danstor could finish, their tormentors took to their heels and disappeared down a side street. Coming along the road was a majestic figure in a blue uniform.

Crysteel’s eyes lit up.

‘A policeman!’ he said. ‘Probably going to investigate a murder somewhere. But perhaps he’ll spare us a minute,’ he added, not very hopefully.

PC Hinks eyed the strangers with some astonishment, but managed to keep his feelings out of his voice.

‘Hello, gents. Looking for anything?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ said Danstor in his friendliest and most soothing tone of voice. ‘Perhaps you can help us. You see, we’ve just landed on this planet and want to make contact with the authorities.’

‘Eh?’ said PC Hinks, startled. There was a long pause – though not too long, for PC Hinks was a bright young man who had no intention of remaining a village constable all his life. ‘So you’ve just landed, have you? In a spaceship, I suppose?’

‘That’s right,’ said Danstor, immensely relieved at the absence of the incredulity, or even violence, which such announcements all too often provoked on the more primitive planets.

‘Well, well!’ said PC Hinks, in tones which he hoped would inspire confidence and feelings of amity. (Not that it mattered much if they both became violent – they seemed a pretty skinny pair.) ‘Just tell me what you want, and I’ll see what we can do about it.’

‘I’m so glad,’ said Danstor. ‘You see, we’ve landed in this rather remote spot because we don’t want to create a panic. It would be best to keep our presence known to as few people as possible until we have contacted your government.’

‘I quite understand,’ replied PC Hinks, glancing round hastily to see if there was anyone through whom he could send a message to his sergeant. ‘And what do you propose to do then?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss our long-term policy with regard to Earth,’ said Danstor cagily. ‘All I can say is that this section of the Universe is being surveyed and opened up for development, and we’re quite sure we can help you in many ways.’

‘That’s very nice of you,’ said PC Hinks heartily. ‘I think the best thing is for you to come along to the station with me so that we can put through a call to the Prime Minister.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Danstor, full of gratitude. They walked trustingly beside PC Hinks, despite his slight tendency to keep behind them, until they reached the village police station.

‘This way, gents,’ said PC Hinks, politely ushering them into a room which was really rather poorly lit and not at all well furnished, even by the somewhat primitive standards they had expected. Before they could fully take in their surroundings, there was a ‘click’ and they found themselves separated from their guide by a large door composed entirely of iron bars.

‘Now don’t worry,’ said PC Hinks. ‘Everything will be quite all right. I’ll be back in a minute.’

Crysteel and Danstor gazed at each other with a surmise that rapidly deepened into a dreadful certainty.

‘We’re locked in!’

‘This is a prison!’

‘Now what are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know if you chaps understand English,’ said a languid voice from the gloom, ‘but you might let a fellow sleep in peace.’

For the first time, the two prisoners saw that they were not alone. Lying on a bed in the corner of the cell was a somewhat dilapidated young man, who gazed at them blearily out of one resentful eye.

‘My goodness!’ said Danstor nervously. ‘Do you suppose he’s a dangerous criminal?’

‘He doesn’t look very dangerous at the moment,’ said Crysteel, with more accuracy than he guessed.

‘What are
you
in for, anyway?’ asked the stranger, sitting up unsteadily. ‘You look as if you’ve been to a fancy-dress party. Oh, my poor head!’ He collapsed again into the prone position.

‘Fancy locking up anyone as ill as this!’ said Danstor, who was a kind-hearted individual. Then he continued, in English, ‘I don’t know why we’re here. We just told the policeman who we were and where we came from, and this is what’s happened.’

‘Well, who are you?’

‘We’ve just landed—’

‘Oh, there’s no point in going through all that again,’ interrupted Crysteel. ‘We’ll never get anyone to believe us.’

‘Hey!’ said the stranger, sitting up once more. ‘What language is that you’re speaking? I know a few, but I’ve never heard of anything like that.’

‘Oh, all right,’ Crysteel said to Danstor. ‘You might as well tell him. There’s nothing else to do until that policeman comes back anyway.’

At this moment, PC Hinks was engaged in earnest conversation with the superintendent of the local mental home, who insisted stoutly that all his patients were present. However, a careful check was promised and he’d call back later.

Wondering if the whole thing was a practical joke, PC Hinks put the receiver down and quietly made his way to the cells. The three prisoners seemed to be engaged in friendly conversation, so he tiptoed away again. It would do them all good to have a chance to cool down. He rubbed his eye tenderly as he remembered what a battle it had been to get Mr Graham into the cell during the small hours of the morning.

That young man was now reasonably sober after the night’s celebrations, which he did not in the least regret. (It was, after all, quite an occasion when your degree came through and you found you’d got Honours when you’d barely expected a Pass.) But he began to fear that he was still under the influence as Danstor unfolded his tale and waited, not expected to be believed.

In these circumstances, thought Graham, the best thing to do was to behave as matter-of-factly as possible until the hallucinations got fed up and went away.

‘If you really have a spaceship in the hills,’ he remarked, ‘surely you can get in touch with it and ask someone to come and rescue you?’

‘We want to handle this ourselves,’ said Crysteel with dignity. ‘Besides, you don’t know our captain.’

They sounded very convincing, thought Graham. The whole story hung together remarkably well. And yet …

‘It’s a bit hard for me to believe that you can build interstellar spaceships, but can’t get out of a miserable village police station.’

Danstor looked at Crysteel, who shuffled uncomfortably.

‘We could get out easily enough,’ said the anthropologist. ‘But we don’t want to use violent means unless it’s absolutely essential. You’ve no idea of the trouble it causes, and the reports we might have to fill in. Besides, if we do get out, I suppose your Flying Squad would catch us before we got back to the ship.’

‘Not in Little Milton,’ grinned Graham. ‘Especially if we could get across to the “White Hart” without being stopped. My car is over there.’

‘Oh,’ said Danstor, his spirits suddenly reviving. He turned to his companion and a lively discussion followed. Then, very gingerly, he produced a small black cylinder from an inner pocket, handling it with much the same confidence as a nervous spinster holding a loaded gun for the first time. Simultaneously, Crysteel retired with some speed to the far corner of the cell.

It was at this precise moment that Graham knew, with a sudden icy certainty, that he was stone-sober and that the story he had been listening to was nothing less than the truth.

There was no fuss or bother, no flurry of electric sparks or coloured rays – but a section of the wall three feet across dissolved quietly and collapsed into a little pyramid of sand. The sunlight came streaming into the cell as, with a great sigh of relief, Danstor put his mysterious weapon away.

‘Well, come on,’ he urged Graham. ‘We’re waiting for you.’

There were no signs of pursuit, for PC Hinks was still arguing on the phone, and it would be some minutes yet before that bright young man returned to the cells and received the biggest shock of his official career. No one at the ‘White Hart’ was particularly surprised to see Graham again; they all knew where and how he had spent the night, and expressed hope that the local Bench would deal leniently with him when his case came up.