Black Silence

Thundering back they came across cold space--eyes aching for remembered vistas, nostrils flaring for sweet fresh air, feet itching to tread on precious soil. They stepped down--into a wasted lifeless horror! Eying each other in despair, they wondered. Must they--_could_ they--colonize an alien world they once called HOME?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"Earth!" said Matthew Magoffin happily. "Good old Terra. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?" Elbows on table, he sat listening to the specially-beamed broadcast from Earth. Half a dozen other members of the first expedition to Mars were also in the messroom of the Argus.

"What's first on your program when we land, Lynn?"

They had been out two and a half years, and it was a subject of which they never wearied.

Lynn said, "A bath--a real one. Not out of a tea cup." She was the expedition's photographer and reporter, a small blonde with a soft triangular face.

The music stopped in the middle of a bar. An announcer's voice broke in.

"_We interrupt this program to bring you a news flash from the Union of South America._"

Everyone stopped talking in the messroom of the spaceship.

"_The plague area in the Andean region is spreading out of control. Disease characterized by minute black spots that appear all over the body from head to foot. The spots are accompanied by a high fever and followed in two to three hours by death._"

"Whew!" said Matt to the company at large. "What a disagreeable way to die! Wonder what causes it?"

As if in answer to his question, the announcer on Earth said, "_To date, the germ has not been isolated. And all attempts to curb the spread of the disease have proved futile._

"_The Pan-American League is meeting now in Lima to consider segregating the entire Andean area where the plague is raging_...."

There was an interruption. Everyone in the messroom was tense, conscious of blurred background noises in the far away studio toward which they were flashing.

"_Here's a special bulletin!_" The announcer's voice sounded frightened and excited. "_Marseilles, Liverpool, Hong Kong and San Francisco report_...."

The speaker went dead.

Matt Magoffin found himself holding his breath, waiting for the news to come back on. But it never did.

After a minute's silence, he leaped to his feet. "Damn that operator! I'm going to see what's wrong."

He started for the starboard passage, a babble of voices breaking out behind him. Matt was a stocky, powerfully built man in his thirties, the expedition's palaeobotanist. He reached the starboard ladder, ran up to the control deck and shouldered into the radio shack without knocking.

"What's up?" he demanded of the operator, a thin freckled youth who was staring at the banks of equipment in perplexity.

Sparks knit his brows.

"Nothing--that I can find."

"What!"

"There isn't a damn thing wrong at this end. The broadcast was interrupted. Power failure, maybe."

Matt Magoffin ran his hand through his short crisp black hair, alarm in his blue eyes.

"Have you tried to contact Earth?"

"No. Not yet."

The operator sat down at his instruments, threw in a switch and spoke into a microphone.

"_Argus_ calling Earth. Argus calling Earth. Argus calling Earth. Come in Earth."

Silence!