Public-domain ebook
by Bryce Walton
Language: en406 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Science-Fiction & Fantasy·Novels·American Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #63986.
The opening · free to read
The visitor from Mars was a first-rate howl. Earthmen reckoned he was endowed with all the qualities of all the greatest clowns in the history of Buffoonery. Often though, the distance between humor and terror can be too short to be funny.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories November 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The scarred rocket rolled down street canyons away from United Nations City, wheeled toward Madison Square Garden between jam-packed, crazily-cheering millions of citizens from every nation on Earth.
Confetti snow drifted in colorful storm, wild faces shone through drifts of spiraling streamers. Signs floated everywhere. Neon signs blinked off and on. Signs floated from balloons across the kleig-lighted sky. Welcome hero signs. And even signs shouting:
WELCOME TO EARTH--ZEKE!
They spelled the name wrong, Johnson thought with some dismay. But that's the way it sounded, he decided, when I radioed in ahead that there was a Martian with us.
Spelled ZEKE, the name scarcely projected the dignity of the name's sound in Martian language. But, in thinking about it now, Johnson realized that it was the only way it could be spelled or pronounced in English.
This seemingly insignificant fact bothered Johnson now. He felt a growing uneasiness. The Martian was largely his responsibility, he felt. It had been Johnson who had spent most of the time on the first visit to Mars with the few Martians left in that one isolated mountain village, learning their language and ancient, conservative, almost static culture. Being an anthropologist, among other things, it had been natural for Johnson to have manifested this particular interest.
Johnson had also been the one to suggest that perhaps Zeke might like to pay Earth a visit.
Zeke had readily agreed, but now Johnson was beginning to wonder why. In six months another rocket would go to Mars and Zeke could go home, but meanwhile--Johnson suddenly began to wonder about the possible ramifications of a Martian's first visit to Earth.
He had radioed ahead about the Martian but had given no details. The world awaited its first look at a Martian, the expectation overshadowing their hero worship of Captain Stromberg, Atomics Engineer Hinton, and Professor William Johnson--the first successful navigators of deep space.
Right now, Stromberg and Hinton were straightening their dress uniforms preparatory to the feting promised when the rocket was wheeled into Madison Square Garden. UN notables would be there, everyone of any importance, plus every one who could be jammed into the Garden. The rocket would be wheeled up to a speaker's platform, the doors would open and out would step the three heroes and Zeke.
Johnson looked at Zeke now with a new and uneasy appraisal. He slumped and then as Johnson motioned to him, Zeke gave a series of grotesque hops. His face, like a monstrous soft rubber mask bought in a novelty shop, twisted into a series of fantastic grimaces.
Stromberg and Hinton grinned appreciatively. They thought Zeke was pretty funny. Johnson no longer thought so because he had realized the cultural significance of Zeke's actions. Johnson gestured for Zeke to look through the port view plate.
His rubberoid features, which at times suggested a travesty of something very remotely human, bunched up and then spread in all directions as though running into yellow putty. "They're welcoming you to Earth, Zeke. 'Welcome, Zeke,' the signs say. You'll be royally entertained. You'll be wined and dined as they say. You're probably the most extraordinary visitor ever seen anywhere."
Zeke swung his long, stick-like arms, or appendages, whatever one chose to call them, in long arcs like pendulums, back and forth and to and fro. His three eyes spread wider and wider in an expression of such intense and gigantic astonishment that Stromberg and Hinton bent over and held their stomachs with uncontrollable laughter.
The flicker of unease in Johnson's stomach flamed a little stronger. The trouble was that Zeke's culture was so serious, so old and wise and serious, there seemed to be absolutely no sense of humor in it. At least none of any human kind that Johnson had been able to discover.
To Zeke, this being an object of humor had no meaning. Zeke could understand, however, the meaning of ridicule, derision and insults and sadness in their actual and realistic sense, divorced from the necessity of contrast that connected these things with laughter, gags, jokes in the human psychology.
So Johnson had never explained to Zeke that he was being laughed at, nor what it would mean if he did know he was being an object of laughter. Somehow now, Johnson wished he hadn't lied, that he hadn't explained to Zeke about Stromberg's and Hinton's laughter: "Well, Zeke, that's a kind of appreciation humans express to each other. It means they accept you. A form of politeness, a social amenity."
Zeke was saying in the peculiar slurred, high-pitched Martian speech. "It is over-powering, so many of you humans! Even in our most ancient records there is no account of there ever having been so many of us as I see of your kind out there!"
"That's only a small percent of the world's population," Johnson said. He took hold of one of Zeke's boneless, spongy arms. "Come on. We go on up now to the air-lock doors. In a few minutes we'll be out of here and you'll be presented to the world."
They were inside the Garden now, the rocket being moved by a giant crane to a position beside the speakers' platform. A ramp was connecting the two. The doors started to open and Stromberg and Hinton stood with stiff, glowing expectancy.
Johnson stood behind them, holding on to Zeke whose eight-foot body slumped with its own peculiar kind of expectancy. In all his 32 years Johnson had never been exactly a social animal. Devoted largely to field work, he had accustomed himself either by choice or necessity or both to an extraordinary degree of isolation. The two years in space hadn't bothered him. He was somewhat anxious to see his friends, but not overly so.
In fact the sight of those countless gaping faces, the packed masses of humanity, had frightened him a little. It had been so utterly peaceful out there in space, and on the high, cold plateaus of Mars.
Odd how formidable seemed the prospect of meeting this gigantic social obligation of facing the whole world. Maybe two years away from Earth was too long.
He could hear the interminable speeches droning away outside the opening doors.
Everybody was waiting out there on that platform.
Presidents and envoys from the Big Three nations, and many slightly less important figures. Everybody who could possibly claim to be anybody.
"From now on," whispered Hinton, "we live like Kings! A pension for life. And a hero forever. The dames--"
"Quiet, please," whispered Captain Stromberg.
Hinton dropped back. He nudged Johnson. "Even the thing here, your friend that walks like a man, will be treated by the world like a prince."
Johnson squeezed Hinton's arm and Hinton winced. "Watch what you say, Hinton. It knows some English now."
"You treat it like it's a human being," Hinton said.
Johnson had no answer to that except agreement. Changing Hinton's attitudes was something else again. Johnson didn't consider the project quite worth the time and trouble. He shrugged.
"This is it," Johnson warned Zeke. Every time he talked in Martian his jaw ached. It was quite a feat.
The present speaker's voice like a worn soundtrack was saying:
"... and now, waiting world, here they are...."
"Ready?" Captain Stromberg whispered.
"... the first to make a voyage to another planet! The first visitor from another world!..."
Zeke shifted his undulating, boneless length as the four of them stepped out onto the platform and into the glare of flood lights, and a sea of smoke and the heat of human bodies. Johnson got the impression, though he couldn't actually see much of it, of a colossal ocean of humanity, great tides of flesh held temporarily motionless and soundless. Microphones slid down. Television and motion picture cameras moved in and back and in again.
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