The Moon Moth and Other Stories (31 page)

“Goodbye, Alfred. Happy landings.”

At noon on June 19th, deep dull clouds began rolling in from the north. Miss Maida Brent arrived at seven o’clock in her Cadillac convertible, and amid the mingled flickers of lightning and flashbulbs went aboard the ark. The press agent attempted to come aboard also, but Alfred barred the way. “Sorry. Crew is complete now.”

“But Miss Brent can’t stay aboard all night, Mr. Johnson.”

“She’ll be aboard for forty days and forty nights. She might as well get used to it. Now scram.”

The press agent shrugged, went to wait in the car. Miss Maida Brent would no doubt leave the ark when she was ready.

The rain began to fall during the evening, and at ten o’clock was coming down heavily. At eleven, the press agent sloshed over to the ark. “Maida! Hey Maida!”

Maida Brent appeared in the doorway of the cabin. “Well?”

“Let’s go! We’ve got all the stuff we need.”

Maida Brent sniffed, looked toward the massive black sky. “What’s the weather report say?”

“Rain.”

“Alfred and I are playing checkers. We’re quite cozy. You go on. Bye.”

The press agent turned up the collar to his coat, hopped stiff-legged back to the car, where he morosely tried to catnap. The thudding of the rain kept him awake.

Dawn failed to reveal itself. At nine o’clock, a wan wet gloom showed gutters ankle deep in water. The rain pelted down ever harder. Along the streets, cars driven by the curious began to appear, their radios turned to the weather report. Puzzled forecasters spoke of stationary cold fronts, occluded lows, cyclones and anti-cyclones. The forecast: rain.

The street became crowded. News came in that the Perry River Bridge had washed out, that Pewter Creek was in flood. Flood? Yes, flood!

Bill Olafson came splashing through the mud. “Hey Alfred! Where are you?”

Alfred looked calmly out of the cabin. “Hello, Bill.”

“My wife and kids want to take a look at your ark. Okay if I bring ’em aboard for a spell?”

“Sorry, Bill. No can do.”

Bill walked uncertainly back to the car. There was a tremendous rumble of thunder—he looked skyward in apprehension.

Alfred heard a sound from the rear of the ark. He pulled on his slicker, his boots, trudged back to find two teenaged boys and their girl friends mounting a ladder.

Alfred dislodged the ladder. “Keep clear, boys. Git away now. I don’t wanta speak to you again.”

“Alfred!” Maida’s voice came thinly through the thrash of rain. “There’s people coming aboard!”

Alfred ran back to meet a score of his friends and neighbors led by Bill Olafson carrying suitcases into the cabin. “Get off this ark, friends,” said Alfred in a kindly voice. “There’s not room aboard.”

“We came to see how things were,” said Bill.

“They’re fine. Now git.”

“I don’t think so, Alfred.” He reached over the side. “Okay Mama, pass up Joanne and the puppy. Quick. Before those others get here.”

“If you don’t go,” said Alfred, “I’ll have to make you git.”

“Just don’t try no funny stuff, Alfred.”

Alfred stepped forward; Bill hit him in the nose. Others of Alfred’s friends and neighbors lifted him, carried him kicking and cursing to the rail, threw him off the ark and into the mud.

From the street scores of people came running: men, women, children. They flung themselves up the rail, clambered aboard the ark. The cabin was crowded, the rails were thronged.

There was a clap of thunder; the rain lessened. Overhead appeared a thin spot in the clouds. The sun burst through. The rain stopped.

Alfred’s friends and neighbors, crowded along the rail, looked down at Alfred. Alfred, still sitting in the mud, looked steadily back. Around them the sun glistened on the wet buildings, the flowing streets.

Sulwen’s Planet

(A Canceling of Unknowns)

I

Professor Jason Gench, Professor Victor Kosmin, Dr. Lawrence Drewe, and twenty-four others of equal note filed from the spaceship to contemplate the scene on Sulwen Plain below. The wondering mutters dwindled to silence; a hollow facetiousness met no response. Professor Gench glanced sidelong toward Professor Kosmin, to encounter Professor Kosmin’s bland stare. Gench jerked his gaze away.

Boorish bumbling camel, thought Gench.

Piffling little jackanapes, thought Kosmin.

Each wished the other twelve hundred and four light-years distant: which is to say, back on Earth. Or twelve hundred and five light-years.

The first man on Sulwen Plain had been James Sulwen, an embittered Irish Nationalist turned space-wanderer. In his memoirs Sulwen wrote: “To say I was startled, awed, dumbfounded, is like saying the ocean is wet. Oh but it’s a lonesome place, so far away, so dim and cold, the more so for the mystery. I stayed there three days and two nights, taking pictures, wondering about the history, all the histories of the universe. What had happened so long ago? What had brought these strange folk here to die? I became haunted; I had to leave…”

Sulwen returned to Earth with his photographs. His discovery was hailed as “the single most important event in human history”. Public interest reached a level of dizzy excitement; here was cosmic drama at its most vivid: mystery, tragedy, cataclysm.

In such a perfervid atmosphere the ‘Sulwen Planet Survey Commission’ was nominated and instructed to perform a brief investigation upon which a full-scale program of research could be based. No one thought to point out that the function of Professor Victor Kosmin, in the field of comparative linguistics, and that of Professor Jason Gench, a philologist, overlapped. The Director of the commission was Dr. Lawrence Drewe, Fellow of Mathematical Philosophy at Vidmar Institute: a mild wry gentleman, superficially inadequate to the job of controlling the personalities of the other members of the commission.

Accompanied by four supply transports with men, materials, and machinery for the construction of a permanent base, the commission departed Earth.

II

Sulwen had understated the desolation of Sulwen’s Plain. A dwarf white sun cast a wan glare double, or possibly triple, the intensity of full moonlight. Basalt crags rimmed the plain to north and east. A mile from the base of the crags was the first of the seven wrecked spaceships: a collapsed cylinder of black and white metal two hundred and forty feet long, a hundred and two feet in diameter. There were five such hulks. In and out of the ships, perfectly preserved in the scant atmosphere of frigid nitrogen, were the corpses of a squat pallid race, something under human size, with four arms, each terminating in two slender fingers.

The remaining two ships, three times the length and twice the diameter of the black and white ships, had been conceived and constructed on a larger, more flamboyant, scale. ‘Big Purple’, as it came to be known, was undamaged except for a gash down the length of its dorsal surface. ‘Big Blue’ had crashed nose first to the planet and stood in an attitude of precarious equilibrium, seemingly ready to topple at a touch. The design of ‘Big Purple’ and ‘Big Blue’ was eccentric, refined, and captious, implying esthetic intent or some analogous quality. These ships were manned by tall slender blue-black creatures with many-horned heads and delicate pinched faces half-concealed behind tufts of hair. They became known as ‘Wasps’ and their enemies, the pale creatures, were labeled ‘Sea Cows’, though in neither case was the metaphor particularly apt.

Sulwen Plain had been the site of a terrible battle between two space-faring races: so much was clear. Three questions occurred simultaneously to each of the commissioners:

Where did these peoples originate?

How long ago had the battle occurred?

How did the technology of the ‘Wasps’ and ‘Sea Cows’ compare with that of Earth?

There was no immediate answer to the first question. Sulwen’s Star controlled no other planets.

As to the time of the battle, a first estimate, derived from the deposition of meteoric dust, suggested a figure of fifty thousand years. More accurate determinations ultimately put the time at sixty-two thousand years.

The third question was more difficult to answer. In some cases Wasp, Sea Cow, and Man had come by different routes to similar ends. In other cases, no comparison was possible.

There was endless speculation as to the course of the battle. The most popular theory envisioned the Sea Cow ships sweeping down upon Sulwen’s Plain to find Big Blue and Big Purple at rest. Big Blue had lifted perhaps half a mile, only to be crippled and plunge nose first to the surface. Big Purple, with a mortal gash down the back, apparently had never left the ground. Perhaps other ships had been present; there was no way of knowing. By one agency or another five Sea Cow ships had been destroyed.

III

The ships from Earth landed on a rise to the southeast of the battle-field, where James Sulwen originally had put down. The commissioners, debarking in their out-suits, walked out to the nearest Sea Cow ship: Sea Cow D, as it became known. Sulwen’s Star hung low to the horizon, casting a stark pallid light. Long black shadows lay across the putty-colored plain.

The commissioners studied the ruptured ship, inspected the twisted Sea Cow corpses, then Sulwen’s Star dropped below the horizon. Instant darkness came to the plain, and the commissioners, looking often over their shoulders, returned to their own ship.

After the evening meal, Director Drewe addressed the group: “This is a preliminary survey. I reiterate because we are scientists: we want to know! We are not so much interested in planning research as in the research itself. Well—we must practise restraint. For most of you, these wrecks will occupy many years to come. I myself, alas! am a formalist, a mathematical theorist, and as such will be denied your opportunity. Well, then, my personal problems aside: temporarily we must resign ourselves to ignorance. The mystery will remain a mystery, unless Professor Gench or Professor Kosmin instantly is able to read one of the languages.” Here Drewe chuckled; he had intended the remark jocularly. Noticing the quick suspicious glance exchanged by Gench and Kosmin he decided that the remark had not been tactful. “For a day or two I suggest a casual inspection of the project, to orient ourselves. There is no pressure on us; we will achieve more if we relax, and try to realize a wide-angle view of the situation. And by all means, everyone be careful of the big blue ship. It looks as if it might topple at a breath!”

Professor Gench smiled bitterly. He was thin as a shrike, with a gaunt crooked face, a crag of a forehead, a black angry gaze. “‘No pressure on us’,” he thought. “What a joke!”

“‘Relax’!” thought Kosmin, with a sardonic twitch of the lips. “With that preposterous Gench underfoot? Pah!” In contrast to Gench, Kosmin was massive, almost portly, with a big pale face, a tuft of yellow hair. His cheekbones were heavy, his forehead narrow and back-sloping. He made no effort to project an ingratiating personality; no more so did Gench. Of the two, Gench was perhaps the more gregarious, but his approach to any situation, social or professional, tended to be sharp and doctrinaire.

“I will perform some quick and brilliant exposition,” Gench decided. “I must put Kosmin in his place.”

“One man eventually will direct the linguistics program,” mused Kosmin. “Who but a comparative linguist?”

Drewe concluded his remarks. “I need hardly urge all to caution. Be especially careful of your footing; do not venture into closed areas. You naturally will be wearing out-suits; check your regenerators and energy levels before leaving the ship; keep your communications channels open at all times. Another matter: let us try to disturb conditions as little as possible. This is a monumental job, there is no point rushing forth, worrying at it like a dog with a rag. Well, then: a good night’s rest and tomorrow, we’ll have at it!”

IV

The commissioners stepped out upon the dreary surface of the plain, approached the wrecked ships. The closest at hand was Sea Cow D, a black and white vessel, battered, broken, littered with pale corpses. The metallurgists touched analyzers to various sections of hull and machinery, reading off alloy compositions; the biologists examined the corpses; the physicists and technicians peered into the engine compartments, marveling at the unfamiliar engineering of an alien race. Gench, walking under the hulk, found a strip of white fiber covered with rows of queer smears. As he lifted it, the fiber, brittle from cold and age, fell to pieces.

Kosmin, noticing, shook his head critically. “Precisely what you must not do!” he told Gench. “A valuable piece of information is lost forever.”

Gench drew his lips back across his teeth. “That much is self-evident. Since the basic responsibility is mine, you need not trouble yourself with doubts or anxieties.”

Kosmin ignored Gench’s remarks as if he had never spoken. “In the future, please do not move or disturb an important item without consulting me.”

Gench turned a withering glare upon his ponderous colleague. “As I interpret the scope of your work, you are to compare the languages after I have deciphered them. You are thus happily able to indulge your curiosity without incurring any immediate responsibility.”

Kosmin did not trouble to refute Gench’s proposition. “Please disturb no further data. You have carelessly destroyed an artifact. Consult me before you touch anything.” And he moved off across the plain toward Big Purple.

Gench, hissing between his teeth, hesitated, then hastened in pursuit. Left to his own devices, Kosmin was capable of any excess. Gench told himself, “Two can play that game!”

Most of the group now stood about Big Purple, which, enormous and almost undamaged, dominated Sulwen Plain. The hull was a rough-textured lavender substance striped with four horizontal bands of corroded metal: apparently a component of the drive-system. Only a powdering of dust and crystals of frozen gas gave an intimation of its great age.

The commissioners walked around the hull, but the ports were sealed. The only access was by the gash along the top surface. A metallurgist found an exterior ladder welded to the hull: he tested the rungs: they seemed sound. While all watched he climbed to the ruptured spine of the ship, gave a jaunty wave of the hand and disappeared.