The Martian Way and Other Stories

The Martian Way and Other Stories Page 45

Nevile Fawkes (botanist; a man who appreciated his own handsomeness by modeling his hair style after that shown on the traditional busts of Alexander the Great, but from whose appearance the presence of a nose far more aquiline than Alexander ever possessed noticeably detracted) was gone for two days, by Junior chronology, in one of the Triple G.'s atmospheric coasters. He could navigate one like a dream and was, in fact, the only man outside the crew who could navigate one at all, so he was the natural choice for the task. Fawkes did not seem noticeably overjoyed about that.

He returned, completely unharmed and unable to hide a grin of relief. He submitted to irradiation for the sake of sterilizing the exterior of his flexible air suit (designed to protect men from the deleterious effect of the outer environment, where no pressure differential existed; the strength and jointedness of a true space suit being obviously unnecessary within an atmosphere as thick as Junior's). The coaster was subjected to a more extended irradiation and pinned down under a plastic coverall.

Fawkes flaunted color photographs in great number. The central valley of the continent was fertile almost beyond Earthly dreams. The rivers were mighty, the mountains rugged and snow-covered (with the usual pyrotechnic solar effects). Under Lagrange II alone, the vegetation looked vaguely repellent, seeming rather dark, like dried blood. Under Lagrange I, however, or under the suns together, the brilliant, flourishing green and the glisten of the numerous lakes (particularly north and south along the dead rims of the departing glaciers) brought an ache of homesickness to the hearts of many.

Fawkes said, "Look at these."

He had skimmed low to take a photochrome of a field of huge flowers dripping with scarlet. In the high ultra-violet radiation of Lagrange I, exposure times were of necessity extremely short, and despite the motion of the coaster, each blossom stood out as a sharp blotch of strident color.

"I swear," said Fawkes, "each one of those was six feet across."

They admired the flowers unrestrainedly.

Fawkes then said, "No intelligent life whatever, of course."

Sheffield looked up from the photographs with instant sharpness. Life and intelligence, after all, were by way of being his province. "How do you know?"

"Look for yourself," said the botanist. "There are the photos. No highways, no cities, no artificial waterways, no signs of anything man-made."

"No machine civilization," said Sheffield. "That's all."

"Even ape men would build shelters and use fire," said Fawkes, offended.

"The continent is ten times as large as Africa and you've been over it for two days. There's a lot you could miss."

"Not as much as you'd think," was the warm response. "I followed every sizable river up and down and looked over both seacoasts. Any settlements are bound to be there."

"In allowing seventy-two hours for two eight thousand-mile seacoasts ten thousand miles apart, plus how many thousand miles of river, that had to be a pretty quick lookover."

Cimon interrupted, "What's this all about? Homo sapiens is the only intelligence ever discovered in the Galaxy through a hundred thousand and more explored planets. The chances of Troas possessing intelligence is virtually nil."

"Yes?" said Sheffield. "You could use the same argument to prove there's no intelligence on Earth."

"Makoyama," said Cimon, "in his report mentioned no intelligent life."

"And how much time did he have? It was a case of another quick feel through the haystack with one finger and a report of no needle."

"What the eternal Universe," said Rodriguez waspishly. "We argue like madmen. Call the hypothesis of indigenous intelligence unproven and let it go. We are not through investigating yet, I hope."