The Illustrated Man (6 page)

Later the officers of the rocket ship ate supper on card tables outside. The captain correlated his data to a silent Martin who sat red-eyed and brooding over his meal.

“Interviewed three dozen people, all of them full of the same milk and hogwash,” said the captain. “It’s Burton’s work all right, I’m positive. He’ll be spilling back in here tomorrow or next week to consolidate his miracles and beat us out in our contracts. I think I’ll stick on and spoil it for him.”

Martin glanced up sullenly. “I’ll kill him,” he said.

“Now, now, Martin! There, there, boy.”

“I’ll kill him—so help me, I will.”

‘We’ll put an anchor on his wagon. You have to admit he’s clever. Unethical but clever.”

“He’s dirty.”

“You must promise not to do anything violent.” Captain Hart checked his figures. “According to this, there were thirty miracles of healing performed, a blind man restored to vision, a leper cured. Oh, Burton’s efficient, give him that.”

A gong sounded. A moment later a man ran up. “Captain, sir. A report! Burton’s ship is coming down. Also the Ashley ship, sir!”

“See!” Captain Hart beat the table. “Here come the jackals to the harvest! They can’t wait to feed. Wait till I confront them. I’ll make them cut me in on this feast—I will!”

Martin looked sick. He stared at the captain.

“Business, my dear boy, business,” said the captain.

Everybody looked up. Two rockets swung down out of the sky.

When the rockets landed they almost crashed.

“What’s wrong with those fools?” cried the captain, jumping up. The men ran across the meadowlands to the steaming ships.

The captain arrived. The airlock door popped open on Burton’s ship.

A man fell out into their arms.

“What’s wrong?” cried Captain Hart.

The man lay on the ground. They bent over him and he was burned, badly burned. His body was covered with wounds and scars and tissue that was inflamed and smoking. He looked up out of puffed eyes and his thick tongue moved in his split lips.

“What happened?” demanded the captain, kneeling down, shaking the man’s arm.

“Sir, sir,” whispered the dying man. “Forty-eight hours ago, back in Space Sector Seventy-nine DFS, off Planet One in this system, our ship, and Ashley’s ship, ran into a cosmic storm, sir.” Liquid ran gray from the man’s nostrils. Blood trickled from his mouth. “Wiped out. All crew. Burton dead. Ashley died an hour ago. Only three survivals.”

“Listen to me!” shouted Hart bending over the bleeding man. “You didn’t come to this planet before this very hour?”

Silence.

“Answer me!” cried Hart.

The dying man said, “No. Storm. Burton dead two days ago. This first landing on any world in six months.”

“Are you sure?” shouted Hart, shaking violently, gripping the man in his hands. “Are you sure?”

“Sure, sure,” mouthed the dying man.

“Burton died two days ago? You’re positive?”

“Yes, yes,” whispered the man. His head fell forward. The man was dead.

The captain knelt beside the silent body. The captain’s face twitched, the muscles jerking involuntarily. The other members of the crew stood back of him looking down. Martin waited. The captain asked to be helped to his feet, finally, and this was done. They stood looking at the city. “That means——”

“That means?” said Martin.

“We’re the only ones who’ve been here,” whispered Captain Hart. “And that man——”

“What about that man, Captain?” asked Martin.

The captain’s face twitched senselessly. He looked very old indeed, and gray. His eyes were glazed. He moved forward in the dry grass.

“Come along, Martin. Come along. Hold me up; for my sake, hold me. I’m afraid I’ll fall. And hurry. We can’t waste time——”

They moved, stumbling, toward the city, in the long dry grass, in the blowing wind.

Several hours later they were sitting in the mayor’s auditorium. A thousand people had come and talked and gone. The captain had remained seated, his face haggard, listening, listening. There was so much light in the faces of those who came and testified and talked he could not bear to see them. And all the while his hands traveled, on his knees, together; on his belt, jerking and quivering.

When it was over, Captain Hart turned to the mayor and with strange eyes said:

“But you must know where he went?”

“He didn’t say where he was going,” replied the mayor.

“To one of the other nearby worlds?” demanded the captain.

“I don’t know.”

“You must know.”

“Do you see him?” asked the mayor, indicating the crowd.

The captain looked. “No.”

‘Then he is probably gone,” said the mayor.

“Probably, probably!” cried the captain weakly. “I’ve made a horrible mistake, and I want to see him now. Why, it just came to me, this is a most unusual thing in history. To be in on something like this. Why, the chances are one in billions we’d arrived at one certain planet among millions of planets the day after 
he
 came! You must know where he’s gone!”

“Each finds him in his own way,” replied the mayor gently.

“You’re hiding him.” The captain’s face grew slowly ugly.

Some of the old hardness returned in stages. He began to stand up.

“No,” said the mayor.

“You know where be is then?” The captain’s fingers twitched at the leather holster on his right side.

“I couldn’t tell you where he is, exactly,” said the mayor.

“I advise you to start talking,” and the captain took out a small steel gun.

“There’s no way,” said the mayor, “to tell you anything.”

“Liar!”

An expression of pity came into the mayor’s face as he looked at Hart.

“You’re very tired,” he said. “You’ve traveled a long way and you belong to a tired people who’ve been without faith a long time, and you want to believe so much now that you’re interfering with yourself. You’ll only make it harder if you kill. You’ll never find him that way.

“Where’d he go? He told you; you know. Come on, tell me!” The captain waved the gun.

The mayor shook his head.

“Tell me! Tell me!”

The gun cracked once, twice. The mayor fell, his arm wounded.

Martin leaped forward. “Captain!”

The gun flashed at Martin. “Don’t interfere.”

On the floor, holding his wounded arm, the mayor looked up. “Put down your gun. You’re hurting yourself. You’ve never believed, and now that you think you believe, you hurt people because of it.”

“I don’t need you,” said Hart, standing over him. “If I missed him by one day here, I’ll go on to another world. And another and another. I’ll miss him by half a day on the next planet, maybe, and a quarter of a day on the third planet, and two hours on the next, and an hour on the next, and half an hour on the next, and a minute on the next. But after that, one day I’ll catch up with him! Do you hear that?” He was shouting now, leaning wearily over the man on the floor. He staggered with exhaustion. “Come along, Martin.” He let the gun hang in his hand.

“No,” said Martin. “I’m staying here.”

“You’re a fool. Stay if you like. But I’m going on, with the others, as far as I can go.”

The mayor looked up at Martin. “I’ll be all right. Leave me. Others will tend my wounds.”

“I’ll be back,” said Martin. “I’ll walk as far as the rocket.” They walked with vicious speed through the city. One could see with what effort the captain struggled to show all the old iron, to keep himself going. When he reached the rocket he slapped the side of it with a trembling hand. He holstered his gun. He looked at Martin.

“Well, Martin?”

Martin looked at him. “Well, Captain?”

The captain’s eyes were on the sky. “Sure you won’t—come with—with me, eh?”

“No, sir.”

“It’ll be a great adventure, by God. I know I’ll find him.”

“You are set on it now, aren’t you, sir?” asked Martin.

The captain’s face quivered and his eyes closed. “Yes.”

“There’s one thing I’d like to know.”

“What?”

“Sir, when you find him—
if
 you find him,” asked Martin, “what will you ask of him?”

“Why—” The captain faltered, opening his eyes. His hands clenched and unclenched. He puzzled a moment and then broke into a strange smile. “Why, I’ll ask him for a little—peace and quiet.” He touched the rocket. “It’s been a long time, a long, long time since—since I relaxed.”

“Did you ever just try, Captain?”

“I don’t understand,” said Hart.

“Never mind. So long, Captain.”

“Good-by, Mr. Martin.”

The crew stood by the port. Out of their number only three were going on with Hart. Seven others were remaining behind, they said, with Martin.

Captain Hart surveyed them and uttered his verdict: “Fools!” He, last of all, climbed into the airlock, gave a brisk salute, laughed sharply. The door slammed.

The rocket lifted into the sky on a pillar of fire.

Martin watched it go far away and vanish.

At the meadow’s edge the mayor, supported by several men, beckoned.

“He’s gone,” said Martin, walking up.

“Yes, poor man, he’s gone,” said the mayor. “And he’ll go on, planet after planet, seeking and seeking, and always and always he will be an hour late, or a half hour late, or ten minutes late, or a minute late. And finally he will miss out by only a few seconds. And when he has visited three hundred worlds and is seventy or eighty years old he will miss out by only a fraction of a second, and then a smaller fraction of a second. And he will go on and on, thinking to find that very thing which he left behind here, on this planet, in this city—”

Martin looked steadily at the mayor.

The mayor put out his hand. “Was there ever any doubt of it?” He beckoned to the others and turned. “Come along now. We mustn’t keep him waiting."

They walked into the city.

THE rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men’s hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped.

“How much farther, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t know. A mile, ten miles, a thousand.”

“Aren’t you sure?”

“How can I be sure?”

“I don’t like this rain. If we only knew how far it is to the Sun Dome, I’d feel better.”

“Another hour or two from here.”

“You really think so, Lieutenant?”

“Of course.”

“Or are you lying to keep us happy?”

“I’m lying to keep you happy. Shut up!”

The two men sat together in the rain. Behind them sat two other men who were wet and tired and slumped like clay that was melting.

The lieutenant looked up. He had a face that once had been brown and now the rain had washed it pale, and the rain had washed the color from his eyes and they were white, as were his teeth, and as was his hair. He was all white. Even his uniform was beginning to turn white, and perhaps a little green with fungus.

The lieutenant felt the rain on his cheeks. “How many million years since the rain stopped raining here on Venus?”

“Don’t be crazy,” said one of the two other men. “It never stops raining on Venus. It just goes on and on. I’ve lived here for ten years and I never saw a minute, or even a second, when it wasn’t pouring.”

“It’s like living under water,” said the lieutenant, and rose up, shrugging his guns into place. “Well, we’d better get going. We’ll find that Sun Dome yet.”

“Or we won’t find it,” said the cynic.

“It’s an hour or so.

“Now you’re lying to me, Lieutenant.”

“No, now I’m lying to myself. This is one of those times when you’ve got to lie. I can’t take much more of this.”

They walked down the jungle trail, now and then looking at their compasses. There was no direction anywhere, only what the compass said. There was a gray sky and rain falling and jungle and a path, and, far back behind them somewhere, a rocket in which they had ridden and fallen. A rocket in which lay two of their friends, dead and dripping rain.

They walked in single file, not speaking. They came to a river which lay wide and flat and brown, flowing down to the great Single Sea. The surface of it was stippled in a billion places by the rain.

“All right, Simmons.”

The lieutenant nodded and Simmons took a small packet from his back which, with a pressure of hidden chemical, inflated into a large boat. The lieutenant directed the cutting of wood and the quick making of paddles and they set out into the river, paddling swiftly across the smooth surface in the rain.

The lieutenant felt the cold rain on his cheeks and on his neck and on his moving arms. The cold was beginning to seep into his lungs. He felt the rain on his ears, on his eyes, on his legs.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” he said.

“Who could? Who has? When? How many nights 
have 
we slept? Thirty nights, thirty days! Who can sleep with rain slamming their head, banging away. . . . I’d give anything for a hat. Anything at all, just so it wouldn’t hit my head any more. I get headaches. My head is sore; it hurts all the time.”

“I’m sorry I came to China,” said one of the others.

“First time I ever heard Venus called China.”

“Sure, China. Chinese water cure. Remember the old torture? Rope you against a wall. Drop one drop of water on your head every half-hour. You go crazy waiting for the next one. Well, that’s Venus, but on a big scale. We’re not made for water. You can’t sleep, you can’t breathe right, and you’re crazy from just being soggy. If we’d been ready for a crash, we’d have brought waterproofed uniforms and hats. It’s this beating rain on your head gets you, most of all. It’s so heavy. It’s like BB shot. I don’t know how long I can take it.”

“Boy, me for the Sun Dome! The man who thought 
them
 up, thought of something.”

They crossed the river, and in crossing they thought of the Sun Dome, somewhere ahead of them, shining in the jungle rain. A yellow house, round and bright as the sun. A house fifteen feet high by one hundred feet in diameter, in which was warmth and quiet and hot food and freedom from rain. And in the center of the Sun Dome, of course, was a sun. A small floating free globe of yellow fire, drifting in space at the top of the building where you could look at it from where you sat, smoking or reading a book or drinking your hot chocolate crowned with marshmallow dollops. There it would be, the yellow sun, just the size of the Earth sun, and it was warm and continuous, and the rain world of Venus would be forgotten as long as they stayed in that house and idled their time.

The lieutenant turned and looked back at the three men using their oars and gritting their teeth. They were as white as mushrooms, as white as lie was. Venus bleached everything away in a few months. Even the jungle was an immense cartoon nightmare, for how could the jungle be green with no sun, with always rain falling and always dusk? The white, white jungle with the pale cheese-colored leaves, and the earth carved of wet Camembert, and the tree boles like immense toadstools—everything black and white. And how often could you see the soil itself? Wasn’t it mostly a creek, a stream, a puddle, a pool, a lake, a river, and then, at last the sea?

“Here we are!”

They leaped out on the farthest shore, splashing and sending up showers. The boat was deflated and stored in a cigarette packet. Then, standing on the rainy shore, they tried to light up a few smokes for themselves, and it was five minutes or so before, shuddering, they worked the inverted lighter and, cupping their hands, managed a few drags upon cigarettes that all too quickly were limp and beaten away from their lips by a sudden slap of rain.

They walked on.

“Wait just a moment,” said the lieutenant. “I thought I saw something ahead.”

“The Sun Dome?”

“I’m not sure. The rain closed in again.

Simmons began to run. “The Sun Dome!”

“Come back, Simmons!”

“The Sun Dome!”

Simmons vanished in the rain. The others ran after him.

They found him in a little clearing, and they stopped and looked at him and what he had discovered.

The rocket ship.

It was lying where they had left it. Somehow they had circled back and were where they had started. In the ruin of the ship green fungus was growing up out of the mouths of the two dead men. As they watched, the fungus took flower, the petals broke away in the rain, and the fungus died.

“How did we do it?”

“An electrical storm must be nearby. Threw our compasses off. That explains it.”

“You’re right.”

“What’ll we do now?”

“Start out again.”

“Good lord, we’re not any closer to anywhere!”

“Let’s try to keep calm about it, Simmons.”

“Calm, calm! This rain’s driving me wild!”

“We’ve enough food for another two days if we’re careful.”

The rain danced on their skin, on their wet uniforms; the rain streamed from their noses and ears, from their fingers and knees. They looked like stone fountains frozen in the jungle, issuing forth water from every pore.

And, as they stood, from a distance they heard a roar.

And the monster came out of the rain.

The monster was supported upon a thousand electric blue legs. It walked swiftly and terribly. It struck down a leg with a driving blow. Everywhere a leg struck a tree fell and burned. Great whiffs of ozone filled the rainy air, and smoke blew away and was broken up by the rain. The monster was a half mile wide and a mile high and it felt of the ground like a great blind thing. Sometimes, for a moment, it had no legs at all. And then, in an instant, a thousand whips would fall out of its belly, white-blue whips, to sting the jungle.

“There’s the electrical storm,” said one of the men. “There’s the thing ruined our compasses. And it’s coming this way.”

“Lie down, everyone,” said the lieutenant.

“Run!” cried Simmons.

“Don’t be a fool. Lie down. It hits the highest points. We may get through unhurt. Lie down about fifty feet from the rocket. It may very well spend its force there and leave us be. Get down!”

The men flopped.

“Is it coming?” they asked each other, after a moment.

“Coming.”

“Is it nearer?”

“Two hundred yards off.”

“Nearer?”

“Here she is!”

The monster came and stood over them. It dropped down ten blue bolts of lightning which struck the rocket. The rocket flashed like a beaten gong and gave off a metal ringing. The monster let down fifteen more bolts which danced about in a ridiculous pantomime, feeling of the jungle and the watery soil.

“No, no!” One of the men jumped up.

“Get down, yon fool!” said the lieutenant.

“No!”

The lightning struck the rocket another dozen times. The lieutenant turned his head on his arm and saw the blue blazing flashes. He saw trees split and crumple into ruin. He saw the monstrous dark cloud turn like a black disk overhead and hurl down a hundred other poles of electricity.

The man who had leaped up was now running, like someone in a great hall of pillars. He ran and dodged between the pillars and then at last a dozen of the pillars slammed down and there was the sound a fly makes when landing upon the grill wires of an exterminator. The lieutenant remembered this from his childhood on a farm. And there was a smell of a man burned to a cinder.

The lieutenant lowered his head. “Don’t look up,” he told the others. He was afraid that he too might run at any moment.

The storm above them flashed down another series of bolts and then moved on away. Once again there was only the rain, which rapidly cleared the air of the charred smell, and in a moment the three remaining men were sitting and waiting for the beat of their hearts to subside into quiet once more.

They walked over to the body, thinking that perhaps they could still save the man’s life. They couldn’t believe that there wasn’t some way to help the man. It was the natural act of men who have not accepted death until they have touched it and turned it over and made plans to bury it or leave it there for the jungle to bury in an hour of quick growth.

The body was twisted steel, wrapped in burned leather. It looked like a wax dummy that had been thrown into an incinerator and pulled out after the wax had sunk to the charcoal skeleton. Only the teeth were white, and they shone like a strange white bracelet dropped half through a clenched black fist.

“He shouldn’t have jumped up.” They said it almost at the same time.

Even as they stood over the body it began to vanish, for the vegetation was edging in upon it, little vines and ivy and creepers, and even flowers for the dead.

At a distance the storm walked off on blue bolts of lightning and was gone.

They crossed a river and a creek and a stream and a dozen other rivers and creeks and streams. Before their eyes rivers appeared, rushing, new rivers, while old rivers changed their courses—rivers the color of mercury, rivers the color of silver and milk.

They came to the sea.

The Single Sea. There was only one continent on Venus. This land was three thousand miles long by a thousand miles wide, and about this island was the Single Sea, which covered the entire raining planet. The Single Sea, which lay upon the pallid shore with little motion . . .

“This way.” The lieutenant nodded south. “I’m sure there are two Sun Domes down that way.

“While they were at it, why didn’t they build a hundred more?”

“There’re a hundred and twenty of them now, aren’t there?”

“One hundred and twenty-six, as of last month. They tried to push a bill through Congress back on Earth a year ago to provide for a couple dozen more, but oh no, you know how that is. They’d rather a few men went crazy with the rain.”

They started south.

The lieutenant and Simmons and the third man, Pickard, walked in the rain, in the rain that fell heavily and lightly, heavily and lightly; in the rain that poured and hammered and did not stop falling upon the land and the sea and the walking people.

Simmons saw it first. “There it is!”

“There’s what?”

“The Sun Dome!”

The lieutenant blinked the water from his eyes and raised his hands to ward off the stinging blows of the rain.

At a distance there was a yellow glow on the edge of the jungle, by the sea. It was, indeed, the Sun Dome.

The men smiled at each other.

“Looks like you were right, Lieutenant.”

“Luck.”

“Brother, that puts muscle in me, just seeing it. Come on! Last one there’s a son-of-a-bitch!” Simmons began to trot. The others automatically fell in with this, gasping, tired, but keeping pace.

“A big pot of coffee for me,” panted Simmons, smiling. “And a pan of cinnamon buns, by God! And just lie there and let the old sun hit you. The guy that invented the Sun Domes, he should have got a medal!”

They ran faster. The yellow glow grew brighter.

“Guess a lot of men went crazy before they figured out the cure. Think it’d be obvious! Right off
.” 
Simmons panted the words in cadence to his running. “Rain, rain! Years ago. Found a friend. Of mine. Out in the jungle. Wandering around. In the rain. Saying over and over, ‘Don’t know enough, to come in, outta the rain. Don’t know enough, to come in, outta the rain. Don’t know enough—’ On and on. Like that. Poor crazy bastard.”

“Save your breath!”

They ran.

They all laughed. They reached the door of the Sun Dome, laughing.

Simmons yanked the door wide. “Hey!” he yelled. “Bring on the coffee and buns!”

There was no reply.

They stepped through the door.

The Sun Dome was empty and dark. There was no synthetic yellow sun floating in a high gaseous whisper at the center of the blue ceiling. There was no food waiting. It was cold as a vault. And through a thousand holes which had been newly punctured in the ceiling water streamed, the rain fell down, soaking into the thick rugs and the heavy modern furniture and splashing on the glass tables. The jungle was growing up like a moss in the room, on top of the bookcases and the divans. The rain slashed through the holes and fell upon the three men’s faces.