Simak, Cliffard D - Madness From Mars - Notisblokk

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Simak, Cliffard D - Madness From Mars

Title : Madness from Mars

Author : Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1939

Genre : science fiction

Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book

Source : scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox

TextBridge Pro 9.0, proofread in MS Word 2000.

Date of e-text : February 14, 2000

Prepared by : Anada Sucka

======================================================================

Madness from Mars

Clifford D. Simak

The _Hello Mars IV_ was coming home, back from the outward reaches of space,

the first ship ever to reach the Red Planet and return. Telescopes located in

the Crater of Copernicus Observatory on the Moon had picked it up and flashed

the word to Earth, giving its position. Hours later, Earth telescopes had found

the tiny mote that flashed in the outer void.

Two years before, those same telescopes had watched the ship's outward

voyage, far out until its silvery hull had dwindled into nothingness. From that

day onward there had been no word or sign of _Hello Mars IV_ - nothing until the

lunar telescopes, picking up again that minute speck in space, advised Earth of

its homecoming.

Communication with the ship by Earth had been impossible. On the Moon,

powerful radio stations were capable of hurling ultra-short wave messages across

the quarter million miles to Earth. But man as yet had found no means of

communicating over fifty million miles of space. So _Hello Mars IV_ had arrowed

out into the silence, leaving the Moon and the Earth to speculate and wonder

over its fate.

Now, with Mars once again swinging into conjunction, the ship was coming

back - a tiny gnat of steel pushing itself along with twinkling blasts of

flaming rocket-fuel. Heading Earthward out of that region of silent mystery,

spurning space-miles beneath its steel-shod heels. Triumphant, with the red dust

of Mars still clinging to its plates - a mote of light in the telescopic lenses.

Aboard it were five brave men - Thomas Delvaney, the expedition's leader;

Jerry Cooper, the red-thatched navigator; Andy Smith, the world's ace cameraman,

and two space-hands, Jimmy Watson and Elmer Paine, grim old veterans of the

Earth-Moon run.

There had been three other _Hello Mars_ ships - three other ships that had

never come back - three other flights that had collided with a meteor a million

miles out from the Moon. The second had flared briefly, deep in space, a red

splash of flame in the telescopes through which the flight was watched - the

fuel tanks had exploded. The third had simply disappeared. On and on it had

gone, boring outward until lost from sight. That had been six years ago, but men

still wondered what had happened.

Four years later - two years ago - the _Hello Mars IV_ had taken off. Today

it was returning, a gleaming thing far out in space, a shining symbol of man's

conquest of the planets. It had reached Mars - and it was coming back. There

would be others, now - and still others. Some would flare against the black and

be lost forever. But others would win through, and man, blindly groping, always

outward, to break his earthly bonds, at last would be on the pathway to the

stars.

Side 1

Simak, Cliffard D - Madness From Mars

Jack Woods, _Express_ reporter, lit a cigarette and asked:

'What do you figure they found out there, Doc?'

Dr. Stephen Gilmer, director of the Interplanetary Communications Research

Commission, puffed clouds of smoke from his black cigar and answered irritably:

'How in blue hell would I know what they found? I hope they found something.

This trip cost us a million bucks.'

'But can't you give me some idea of what they might have found?' persisted

Woods. 'Some idea of what Mars is like. Any new ideas.'

Dr. Gilmer wrangled the cigar viciously.

'And have you spread it all over the front page,' he said. 'Spin something

out of my own head just because you chaps are too impatient to wait for the

actual data. Not by a damn sight. You reporters get my goat sometimes.'

'Ah, Doc, give us something,' pleaded Gary Henderson, staff man for the

Star.

'Sure,' said Don Buckley, of the _Spaceways_. 'What do you care? You can

always say we misquoted you. It wouldn't be the first time.'

Gilmer gestured toward the official welcoming committee that stood a short

distance away.

'Why don't you get the mayor to say something, boys?' he suggested. 'The

mayor is always ready to say something.'

'Sure,' said Gary, 'but it never adds up to anything. We've had the mayor's

face on the front page so much lately that he thinks he owns the paper.'

'Have you any idea why they haven't radioed us?' asked

Woods. 'They've been in sending distance for several hours now.'

Gilmer rolled the cigar from east to west. 'Maybe they broke the radio,' he

said.

Nevertheless there were little lines of worry on his face. The fact that

there had been no messages from the _Hello Mars IV_ troubled him. If the radio

had been broken it could have been repaired.

Six hours ago the _Hello Mars IV_ had entered atmosphere. Even now it was

circling the Earth in a strenuous effort to lose speed. Word that the ship was

nearing Earth had brought spectators to the field in ever-increasing throngs.

Highways and streets were jammed for miles around.

Perspiring police cordons struggled endlessly to keep the field clear for a

landing. The day was hot, and soft drink stands were doing a rushing business.

Women fainted in the crowd and some men were knocked down and trampled.

Ambulance sirens sounded.

'Humph,' Woods grunted. 'We can send space-ships to Mars, but we don't know

how to handle crowds.'

He stared expectantly into the bright blue bowl of the sky.

'Ought to be getting in pretty soon,' he said.

His words were blotted out by a mounting roar of sound. The ear-splitting

explosions of roaring rocket tubes. The thunderous drumming of the ship shooting

over the horizon.

Side 2

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