New Folks' Home: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 6) (6 page)

The moaning had been too soft and faint to hear through the door but it was there, waiting for me, when I came into the entryway that led into the kitchen.

It was a mewling rather than a moan, as if the tongue that made it belonged to a mindless creature. It sounded as if it had been much louder only a little time before, but now had dwindled through sheer physical exhaustion.

I found the gun in my pocket and my hand was shaking as I pulled it out. I wanted to run, I wanted very much to run. But I couldn’t run, for I had to know. I had to know that whatever it might be was not as bad as I imagined it.

I slid into the kitchen and from there into the dining-room and the moaning began low and soared into a whimper, then rose to what would have been a scream if the creature that voiced it had had the strength to scream.

In the parlor I saw something on the floor and moved cautiously toward it. The thing upon the floor writhed and cowered and moaned and when it became aware of me it dragged itself toward me and I knew that it was begging, although it made no words, but begged with the heart-rending sounds that emanated from its mouth.

I backed against the wall, trying to get away, but it reached me and lifted up hooked claws and wrapped its arms around my knees. Its head tilted back to look at me and I saw the face of Foster Adams. The room was dark, for the blinds were tightly pulled as always and the first faint grey of dawn was just beginning to paint the dining-room windows.

I could not see the face too well and for that I always have been thankful. For the eyes were wider and whiter than I remembered them and the lips were pulled back in a frozen snarl of fear. There were flecks of foam upon the beard.

“Adams,” I shouted at him. “Adams, what has happened?”

But there was no need to ask. I knew. Not what Adams knew—not the mind-shattering hell-raw facts that Adams knew—only that he had found the thing he sought. By reversed crucifix, by nails clawing at the door, by goat-tracks in the yard he had found the answer.

Nor did he answer me. His arms slipped from my legs and he fell upon the floor and lay very still and I knew that Foster Adams was beyond all answering.

Then, for the first time, I became aware of another in the room, a motionless blackness that stood in the deepest shadow.

For a moment I stood there above the sprawled body of Foster Adams and looked at the other in the room, not seeing him too well, for it was still quite dark. And he looked back at me. Still silent, I put the gun back into my pocket and turned around and left.

Behind me I heard the other walking across the floor. Hoofs crackled and hocks snapped and the rhythm of the footsteps told me that he walked not on four legs but on two.

Hermit of Mars

Clifford D. Simak received $125 for this story, and it was published in the June 1939 issue of
Astounding Science Fiction
. It has features that lead one to think of “Masquerade” and “Madness from Mars,” but I am always going to wonder if it was mere coincidence that led Cliff to use the names Kent Clark and Howard Carter in this story. …

—dww

The sun plunged over the western rim of Skeleton Canal and instantly it was night. There was no twilight. Twilight was an impossible thing in the atmosphere of Mars, and the Martian night clamped down with frigid breath, and the stars danced out in the near-black sky, twinkling, dazzling stars that jigged a weird rigadoon in space.

Despite five years in the wilderness stretches of the Red Planet, Kent Clark still was fascinated by this sudden change from day to night. One minute sunlight—next minute starlight, the stars blazing out as if they were electric lights and someone had snapped the switch. Stars that were larger and more brilliant and gave more light than the stars seen from the planet Earth. Stars that seemed to swim in the swiftly cooling atmosphere. By midnight the atmosphere would be cooled to almost its minimum temperature, and then the stars would grow still and even more brilliant, like hard diamonds shining in the blackness of the sky, but they would be picturesque, showing their own natural colors, blue and white and red.

Outside the tiny quartz “igloo” the night wind keened among the pinnacles and buttresses and wind-eroded formations of the canal. On the wings of the wind, almost indistinguishable from the wind’s own moaning, came the mournful howling of the Hounds, the great gaunt, shaggy beasts that haunted the deep canals and preyed on all living things except the Eaters.

Charley Wallace, squatting on the floor of the igloo, was scraping the last trace of flesh from the pelt of a Martian beaver. Kent watched the deft twist of his wrist, the flashing of the knife blade in the single tiny radium bulb which illuminated the igloo’s interior.

Charley was an old-timer. Long ago the sudden goings and comings of Martian daylight and night had ceased to hold definite wonder for him. For twenty Martian years he had followed the trail of the Martian beaver, going farther and farther afield, penetrating deeper and deeper into the mazes of the even farther canals that spread like a network over the face of the planet.

His face was like old leather, wrinkled and brown above the white sweep of his long white beard. His body was pure steel and whang-hide. He knew all the turns and tricks, all the trails and paths. He was one of the old-time canal-men.

The heater grids glowed redly, utilizing the power stored in the seleno cells during the hours of daylight by the great sun-mirrors set outside the igloo. The atmosphere condensers chuckled softly. The electrolysis plant, used for the manufacture of water, squatted in its corner, silent now.

Charley carefully laid the pelt across his knees, stroked the deep brown fur with a wrinkled hand.

“Six of ‘em,” he said. His old eyes, blue as the sheen of ice, sparkled as he looked at Kent. “We’ll make a haul this time, boy,” he said. “Best huntin’ I’ve seen in five years or more.”

Kent nodded. “Sure will,” he agreed.

The hunting had been good. Out only a month now and they had six pelts, more than many trappers and hunters were able to get during an entire year. The pelts would bring a thousand apiece—perhaps more—back at the Red Rock trading post. Most valuable fur in the entire Solar System, they would sell at three times that amount back in the London or New York fur marts. A wrap of them would cost a cool one hundred thousand.

Deep, rich, heavy fur. Kent shivered as he thought about it. The fur
had
to be heavy. Otherwise the beaver would never be able to exist. At night, the temperature plunged to 40 and 50 below, Centigrade, seldom reached above 20 below at high noon. Mars was cold! Here on the equator the temperature varied little, unlike the poles, where it might rise to 20 above during the summer when, for ten long months, the Sun never set, dropped to 100 or more below in the winter, when the Sun was unseen for equally as long.

He leaned back in his chair and gazed out through the quartz walls of the igloo. Far down the slope of the canal wall he saw the flickering lights of the Ghosts, those tenuous, wraith-like forms whose origin, true nature, and purpose were still the bone of bitter scientific contention.

The starlight threw strange lights and shadows on the twisted terrain of the canal. The naturally weird surface formations became a nightmare of strange, awe-impelling shapes, like pages snatched from the portfolio of a mad artist.

A black shape crossed a lighted ravine, slunk into the shadows.

“A Hound,” said Kent.

Charley cursed in his whiskers.

“If them lopers keep hangin’ around,” he prophesied savagely, “we’ll have some of their pelts to take out to Red Rock.”

“They’re mighty gun-shy,” declared Kent. “Can’t get near one of them.”

“Yeah,” said Charley, “but just try goin’ out without a gun and see what happens. ‘Most as bad as the Eaters. Only difference is that the Hounds would just as soon eat a man, an’ the Eaters would rather eat a man. They sure hanker after human flesh.”

Another of the black shapes, slinking low, belly close to the ground, crossed the ravine.

“Another one,” said Kent.

Something else was moving in the ravine, a figure that glinted in the starlight.

Kent leaned forward, choking back a cry. Then he was on his feet.

“A man,” he shouted. “There’s a man out there!”

Charley’s chair overturned as he leaped up and stared through the quartz.

The space-armored figure was toiling up the slope that led to the igloo. In one hand the man carried a short blast rifle, and as they watched, the two trappers saw him halt and wheel about, the rifle leveled, ready for action, to stare back at the shadows into which the two Hounds had disappeared only a moment before.

A slight movement to the left and behind the man outside caught Kent’s eye and spurred him into action.

He leaped across the igloo and jerked from its rack his quartz-treated space suit, started clambering into it.

“What’s the trouble?” demanded Charley. “What the hell you doin’?”

“There’s an Eater out there,” shouted Kent. “I saw it just a minute ago.”

He snapped down the helmet and reached for his rifle as Charley spun open the inner air-lock port. Swiftly Kent leaped through, heard the inner port being screwed shut as he swung open the outer door.

Cold bit through the suit and into his very bones as he stepped out into the Martian night. With a swift flip he turned on the chemical heat units and felt a glow of warmth sweep over him.

The man in the ravine below was trudging up the path toward the igloo.

Kent shouted at him.

“Come on! Fast as you can!”

The man halted at the shout, stared upward.

“Come on!” screamed Kent.

The spacesuit moved forward.

Kent, racing down the ravine, saw the silica-armored brute that lurched out of the shadows and sped toward the unsuspecting visitor.

Kent’s rifle came to his shoulder. The sights lined on the ugly head of the Eater. His finger depressed the firing mechanism and the gun spat a tight column of destructive blue fire. The blast crumpled the Eater in mid-leap, flung him off his stride and to one side. But it did not kill him. His unlovely body, gleaming like a reddish mirror in the starlight, clawed upon its feet, stood swinging the gigantic head from side to side.

A shrill scream sounded in Kent’s helmet phones, but he was too busy getting the sights of the weapon lined on the Eater again to pay it any attention.

Again the rifle spat and purred, the blue blast-flame impinging squarely on the silica-armored head. Bright sparks flew from the beast’s head and then suddenly the head seemed to dissolve, melting down into a gob of blackened matter that glowed redly in places. The Eater slowly toppled sidewise and skidded ponderously down the slope to come to rest against a crimson boulder.

Kent signaled to the visitor.

“Come on,” he shouted. “Quick about it! There may be more!”

Swiftly the man in the space suit came up the slope toward Kent.

“Thanks,” he said as he drew abreast of the trapper.

“Get going, fellow,” said Kent tersely. “It isn’t safe to be out here at night.”

He fell in behind the visitor as they hurried toward the open port of the airlock.

The visitor lifted the helmet and laid it on the table and in the dim light of the radium bulb Kent saw the face of a woman.

He stood silent, staring. A visit by a man to their igloo in this out-of-the way spot would have been unusual enough; that a woman should drop in on them seemed almost incredible.

“A woman,” said Charley. “Dim my sights, it’s a woman.”

“Yes, I’m a woman,” said the visitor, and her tone, while it held a hidden hint of culture, was sharp as a whip. It reminded one of the bite of the wind outside. Her eyebrows were naturally high arched, giving her an air of eternal question and now she fastened that questioning gaze on the old trapper.

“You are Charley Wallace, aren’t you?” she asked.

Charley shifted from one foot to another, uncomfortable under that level stare. “That’s me,” he admitted, “but you have the advantage of me, ma’am.”

She hesitated, as if uncertain what he meant and then she laughed, a laugh that seemed to come from deep in her throat, full and musical. “I’m Ann Smith,” she said.

She watched them, eyes flickering from one to the other, but in them she saw no faintest hint of recognition, no start of surprise at the name.

“They told me at Red Rock I’d find you somewhere in Skeleton Canal,” she explained.

“You was a-lookin’ for us?” asked Charley.

She nodded. “They told me you knew every foot of this country.”

Charley squared his shoulders, pawed at his beard. His eyes gleamed brightly. Here was talk he understood. “I know it as well as anyone,” he admitted.

She wriggled her shoulders free of the spacesuit, let it slide, crumpling to the floor, and stepped out of it. Kent stored his own suit on the rack and, picking the girl’s suit off the floor, placed it beside his own.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Charley, “I’ve roamed these canals for over twenty Martian years and I know ‘em as good as most. I wouldn’t be afraid of gettin’ lost.”

Kent studied their visitor. She was dressed in trim sports attire, faultless in fashion, hinting of expensive shops. Her light brown, almost blond hair, was smartly coiffed.

“But why were you lookin’ for us?” asked Charley.

“I was hoping you would do something for me,” she told him.

“Now,” Charley replied, “I’d be glad to do something for you. Anything I can do.”

Kent, watching her face, thought he saw a flicker of anxiety flit across her features. But she did not hesitate. There was no faltering of words as she spoke.

“You know the way to Mad-Man’s Canal?”

If she had slapped Charley across the face with her gloved hand the expression on his face could not have been more awe-struck and dumfounded.

He started to speak, stuttered, was silent.

“You can’t mean,” said Kent, softly, “that you want us to go into Mad-Man’s Canal.”

She whirled on him and it was as if he were an enemy. Her defenses were up. “That’s exactly what I mean,” she said and again there was that wind-like lash in her voice. “But I don’t want you to go alone. I’ll go with you.”

She walked slowly to one of the two chairs in the igloo, dropped into it, crossed her knees, swung one booted foot impatiently.

In the silence Kent could hear the chuckling of the atmosphere condensers, the faint sputter of the heating grids.

“Ma’am,” said Charley, “you sure must be jokin’. You don’t really mean you want to go into Mad-Man’s?”

She faced him with a level stare. “But I do,” she declared. “I never was more serious in my life. There’s someone there I have to see.”

“Lady,” protested the old trapper, “someone’s been spoofin’ you. There ain’t nobody over in Mad-Man’s. You couldn’t find a canal-man in his right mind who’d go near the place.”

“There is,” she told him. “And probably you’ll laugh at this, too, but I happen to know it to be the truth. The man I want to see is Harry, the Hermit.”

Kent guffawed, softly, little more than a chuckle under his breath. But she heard and came up out of the chair.

“You’re laughing,” she said and the words were an accusation.

“Sit down,” said Kent, “and let me tell you something. Something that no canal-man could admit, but something that every one of them know is the truth.”

Slowly she sat down in the chair. Kent sat easily on the edge of the table.

“There isn’t any such a person as Harry, the Hermit,” he said. “It’s just a myth. Just one of those stories that have grown up among the canal-men. Wild tales that they think up when they sit alone in the desolation of the Martian wilderness. Just figments of imagination they concoct to pass away the time. And then, when they go out with their furs, they tell these stories over the drinks at the trading posts and those they tell them to, tell them to the others—and so the tale is started. It goes from mouth to mouth. It gains strength as it goes, and each man improves upon it just a little, until in a year or two it is a full-blown legend. Something that the canal-men almost believe themselves, but know all the time is just a wild canal-tale.”

“But I know,” protested Ann. “I know there is such a man. I have to see him. I know he lives in Mad-Man’s Canal.”

“Listen,” snapped Kent and the quiet casualness was gone from his words. “Harry, the Hermit, is everywhere. Go a few hundred miles from here and men will tell you he lives here in Skeleton Canal. Or he is down in the Big Eater system or he’s up north in the Icy Hills. He is just an imaginary person, I tell you. Like the Paul Bunyan of the old lumberjacks back on Earth. Like Pecos Pete of the old American southwest. Like the fairies of the old Irish stories. Some trapper thought him up one lonely night and another trapper improved on him and a fellow dealing a stud poker hand in some little town improved a little more until today he is almost a real personage. Maybe he is real—real as a symbol of a certain group of men—but for all practical purposes, he is just a story, a fabrication of imagination.”