G. Stanley Weinbaum - The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum

A Del Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in

Canada by Ballantine Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

ISBN 0-345-27965-4

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Ballantine Books Edition: April 1974 Third Printing: January 1979

Cover painting by Dean EllisACKNOWLEDGMENTS

November, 1934.

February, 1935.

"Pygmalion's Spectacles," copyright, 1935, by Continental Publications, Inc., for Wonder Stories,

June, 1935.

December, 1935. Copy-right 1936, by Margaret Weinbaum.

March, 1936.

1935.

August, 1936.

All stories in this volume included by arrangement with For-rest J. Ackerman, agent for the heir, 2495

Glendower Avenue, Hollywood, California 90027

Contents

Introduction The Second Nova, Isaac Asimov

A Martian Odyssey

Valley of Dreams

The Adaptive Ultimate

Parasite Planet

Pygmalion's Spectacles

Shifting Seas

The Worldsof If

The Mad Moon

Redemption Cairn

The Ideal

The Lotus Eaters

Proteus Island

Afterword: Stanley G. Weinbaum, A Personal Recollection by Robert Bloch

The Second Nova

THREE TIMES in the half-century history of magazine science fiction a new writer has burst into the

field like a nova, cap-turing the imagination of the readers at once, altering the nature of science fiction

and converting every other writer into an imitator. (Nor may there ever be a fourth time, for since 1939,

when the third nova appeared, the field has surely grown too large and too diverse to be turned in its path

by any single story by any new writer.)

Let me tell you about the first and third novas, then, so that you can see the similarities between them

and will have a better appreciation of the truly remarkable nature of the second and greatest of the three.

In the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, at a time when magazine science fiction was only a little

over two years old, there appeared the first installment of "The Skylark of Space," by Edward Elmer

Smith and Lee Hawkins. It was E. E. Smith's first published science-fiction story.

For the first time in a science-fiction magazine, man was whirled off into the depths of interstellar

space, with all the Universe open before him. For the first time, the reader had the chance to visualize

man as a creature of infinite capacity —man as God, almost.

The readers loved it. "The Skylark of Space" became a classic at once, and other writers did their

best to imitate it. The field was never the same again, and E. E. Smith was a demigod of science fiction

for the remainder of his life.

E. E. Smith was the first nova.

In the August 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, there appeared the short story "Life-Line,"

by a new author, Robert A. Heinlein. It attracted attention at once for its low-keyed, naturalistic style, for

the utter absence of histrionics or the cardboard attitudes common in most science fiction.

The story did not, perhaps, instantly grab the readers and shake the field into a new form, for it was a

little obscured by the nearly simultaneous appearance of the more spectacular and longer "Black

Destroyer," by A. E. van Vogt, another new writer, in the July 1939 Astounding. But Heinlein

con-tinued to write stories rapidly and Astounding continued to publish them. Within the year it became

quite obvious that Robert A. Heinlein was the best living science-fiction writer.

Again readers demanded more, and again almost every writer in the field (including myself) began,

more or less con-sciously and more or less thoroughly, to imitate Heinlein.

Robert A. Heinlein was the third nova.

In many ways, Smith and Heinlein were alike. Both, for instance, published their initial,

attention-capturing pieces in what was at the time the foremost magazine in the field: Amazing published

Smith's story, Astounding published Hein-lein's. (At the time of "The Skylark of Space," Amazing was,

indeed, the only science-fiction magazine being published.)

In both cases an important and seminal editor had created an exciting magazine within which the nova

could show its luster to the full. It was Hugo Gernsback in Smith's case; John W. Campbell, Jr., in

Heinlein's.

In neither case was the writer a born writer in the sense that he had been fiddling with pen and paper

since he could toddle, had been submitting from the age of twelve and publishing from the age of sixteen.

Both Smith and Heinlein had engineering backgrounds, and neither had any intention of becoming a

professional writer until, more by accident than anything else, each discovered how "easy" writing was.

Both were past thirty when their first stories were published.

In both cases, their fame was enduring. Each continued to produce for many years, so that there were

always new stories to add to the canon and to their reputation in the hearts of new generations of

readers.

The February 1948 issue of Astounding carried the fourth and last installment of "Children of the

Lens," Smith's last important work. Twenty years after "The Skylark of Space," he was still read avidly.

As for Heinlein, he is writing and publishing today, thirty-five years after the publication of his first

story, and he has lost none of his reputation. In a recent fan-poll, he stilt fin-ished in first place as all-time

favorite science-fiction writer.

The second nova appeared in 1934, just six years after Smith and just five years before Heinlein. In

the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories, a short story entitled "A Martian Odyssey" appeared by a

never-before-published writer, Stanley G. Weinbaum.

Observe the differences. At the time the story appeared, Wonder was not the foremost

science-fiction magazine. It was, in my opinion, third in a field of three. Its publisher was indeed Hugo

Gemsback, but Gernsback was no longer in the forefront of creative thinking in the field. The editor was

Charles D. Hornig, who, in the history of science-fiction edit-ing, is utterly undistinguished and whose

sole claim to fame, indeed, may be the recognition of the worth of this particular story.

Yet, hidden in this obscure magazine, "A Martian Odyssey had the effect on the field of an exploding

grenade. With this single story, Weinbaum was instantly recognized as the world's best living

science-fiction writer, and at once almost every writer in the field tried to imitate him.

The second nova differed in another important quality from the first and third.

Although E. E. Smith was a wonderful human being, beloved by all who knew him (including myself),

the sad truth is that he was an indifferent writer, who developed only mod-erately with the years. Heinlein

was a much better writer than Smith, but his first story, "Life-Line," is minor Heinlein and on no one's list

of all-time great tales.

How different the case with "A Martian Odyssey." This story showed at once a writing skill as

easy-flowing and as natural, not merely as Heinlein's, but as Heinlein's at its best. "A Martian Odyssey" is

major Weinbaum.

In 1970, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted on the best science-fiction short stories of all

time, and among those that proved the favorites "A Martian Odyssey" was the oldest. It was the first

science-fiction story every published in the magazines to withstand the critical scrutiny of profession-als a

generation later. And it did more than merely withstand the test. It ended up in second place.

Like Smith and Heinlein, Weinbaum was not a born writer. Like Smith and Heinlein, he had an

engineering background (he was a chemical engineer, like Smith). Like Smith and Heinlein, his first story

was published when he was over thirty.

And there the resemblance ends, for the tragic truth is that Weinbaum, even as he entered the field

and became at once its leader, was a dying man.

On December 14, 1935, at the age of 33, and only one and a half years after the publication of his

first story, Weinbaum died of cancer and his career was over. By the time of his death, he had published

twelve stories; eleven more appeared posthumously.

Yet even without the advantage of decades of accomplish-ment and development, he remains alive in

the memories of fans. Any new collection of his stories remains, and must remain, a major event in

science fiction,

Now what was most characteristic of Weinbaum's stories? What was it that most fascinated the

readers? The answer is easy—his extra-terrestrial creatures.

There were, to be sure, extra-terrestrial creatures in science fiction long before Weinbaum. Even if we

restrict ourselves to magazine science fiction, they were a commonplace. Yet before Weinbaum's time,

they were cardboard, they were shad-ows, they were mockeries of life.

The pre-Weinbaum extra-terrestrial, whether humanoid or monstrous, served only to impinge upon

the hero, to serve as a menace or as a means of rescue, to be evil or good in strictly human terms—never

to be something in itself, inde-pendent of mankind.

Weinbaum was the first, as far as I know, to create extra-terrestrials that had their own reasons for

existing.

He did more than that, too; he created whole sense-making ecologies.

Weinbaum had a consistent picture of the solar system (his stories never went beyond Pluto) that was

astronomically correct in terms of the knowledge of the mid-1930s. He could not be wiser than his time,

however, so he gave Venus a day-side and a night-side, and Mars an only moderately thin at-mosphere

and canals. He also took the chance (though the theory was already pretty well knocked-out at the time)

of making the outer planets hot rather than cold so that the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn could be

habitable.

On each of the worlds he deals with, then, he allows for the astronomic difference and creates a world

of life adapted to the circumstances of that world. The super-jungle of the day-side of Venus as pictured

in "Parasite Planet" is, in my opin-ion, the most perfect example of an alien ecology ever constructed.

In Weinbaum's stories, the plots, though tightly and well-constructed, exist in the reader's mind largely

for the oppor-tunity they present for a voyage of discovery of strange worlds and of ever-fascinating

life-forms.

Of all his life-forms, the most fascinating perhaps are Tweel, the pseudo-ostrich in "A Martian

Odyssey," and Oscar, the intelligent plant in "The Lotus Eaters." In both cases, Weinbaum met the

challenge of a demand John Campbell was to make of his writers in later years: "Write me a story about

an organism that thinks as well as a man, but not like a man." I don't think anyone has done it as well as

Weinbaum in all the years since Weinbaum.

And what would have happened if Weinbaum had lived? It is likely, sad to say, that he would have

left magazine science fiction for brighter, greener, and more lucrative fields.

Yet what if he had not? What if he had stayed in magazine science fiction over the years as some

other major talents have, talents such as Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, and even Robert A. Heinlein?

In that case, there would never have been a "Campbell revolution," I think.

In 1938, when John Campbell took over complete control of Astounding, he turned the field toward

greater realism and, at the same time, toward greater humanism-a double direc-tion he had himself

marked out with his story "Twilight," which had appeared in the November 1934 Astounding. In so

doing, he developed a stable of authors, including Heinlein, Van Vogt, and many others--myself for one.

But Weinbaum was a Campbell author before Campbell. "A Martian Odyssey" appeared half a year

before "Twilight," so Weinbaum is clearly one author who owed nothing to Campbell. Had Weinbaum

continued producing there would have been no Campbell revolution. All that Campbell could have done

would have been to reinforce what would un-doubtedly have come to be called the "Weinbaum

revolutions".

And in Weinbaum's giant shadow, all the Campbell authors would have found themselves less

remarkable niches. Wein-baum, who would be in his early seventies now had he lived, would surely be in

first place in the list of all-time favorite science-fiction writers.

Isaac Asmov

A MARTIAN ODYSSEY

Jarvis stretched himself as luxuriously as he could in the cramped general quarters of the Ares.

'Air you can breathe,' he exulted. 'It feels as thick as soup after the thin stuff out there!' He nodded at

the Martian landscape stretching flat and desolate in the light of the nearer moon, beyond the glass of the

port.

The other three stared at him sympathetically - Putz, the engineer, Leroy, the biologist, and Harrison,

the astronomer and captain of the expedition. Dick Jarvis was chemist of the famous crew, the Ares

expedition, first human beings to set foot on the mysterious neighbor of the earth, the planet Mars. This,

of course, was in the old days, less than twenty years after the mad American Doheny perfected the

atomic blast at the cost of his life, and only a decade after the equally mad Cardoza rode on it to the

moon. They were true pioneers, these four of the Ares. Except for a half-dozen moon expeditions and

the ill-fated de Lancey flight aimed at the seductive orb of Venus, they were the first men to feel other

gravity than earth's, and certainly the first successful crew to leave the earth-moon system. And they

deserved that success when one considers the difficulties and discomforts - the months spent in

acclimatization chambers back on earth, learning to breathe the air as tenuous as that of Mars, the

challenging of the void in the tiny rocket driven by the cranky reaction motors of the twenty-first century,

and mostly the facing of an absolutely unknown world.

Jarvis stretched and fingered the raw and peeling tip of his frostbitten nose. He sighed again

contentedly.

'Well,' exploded Harrison abruptly, 'are we going to hear what happened? You set out all shipshape

in an auxiliary rocket, we don't get a peep for ten days, and finally Putz here picks you out of a lunatic

ant-heap with a freak ostrich as your pal! Spill it, man!'

'Speel?' queried Leroy perplexedly. 'Speel what?'

'He means 'spiel',' explained Putz soberly. 'It iss to tell.'

Jarvis met Harrison's amused glance without the shadow of a smile. 'That's right, Karl,' he said in

grave agreement with Putz. 'Ich spiel es!' He grunted comfortably and began.

'According to orders,' he said, 'I watched Karl here take off toward the North, and then I got into

my flying sweat-box and headed south. You'll remember, Cap - we had orders not to land, but just scout

about for points of interest. I set the two cameras clicking and buzzed along, riding pretty high - about

two thousand feet - for a couple of reasons. First, it gave the cameras a greater field, and second, the

under-jets travel so far in this half-vacuum they call air here that they stir up dust if you move low.'

'We know all that from Putz,' grunted Harrison. 'I wish you'd saved the films, though. They'd have

paid the cost of this junket; remember how the public mobbed the first moon pictures?'

'The films are safe,' retorted Jarvis. 'Well,' he resumed, 'as I said, I buzzed along at a pretty good

clip; just as we figured, the wings haven't much lift in this air at less than a hundred miles per hour, and

even then I had to use the under-jets.

'So, with the speed and the altitude and the blurring caused by the under-jets, the seeing wasn't any

too good. I could see enough, though, to distinguish that what I sailed over was just more of this gray

plain that we'd been examining the whole week since our landing - same blobby growths and the same

eternal carpet of crawling little plantanimals, or biopods, as Leroy calls them. So I sailed along, calling

back my position every hour as instructed, and not knowing whether you heard me.'

'I did!' snapped Harrison.

'A hundred and fifty miles south,' continued Jarvis imperturbably, 'the surface changed to a sort of

low plateau, nothing but desert and orange-tinted sand. I figured that we were right in our guess, then,

and this gray plain we dropped on was really the Mare Cimmerium which would make my orange desert

the region called Xanthus. If I were right, I ought to hit another gray plain, the Mare Chronium in another

couple of hundred miles, and then another orange desert, Thyle I or II. And so I did.'

'Putz verified our position a week and a half ago!' grumbled the captain. 'Let's get to the point.'

'Coming!' remarked Jarvis. 'Twenty miles into Thyle - believe it or not - I crossed a canal!'

'Putz photographed a hundred! Let's hear something new!'

'And did he also see a city?'

'Twenty of 'em, if you call those heaps of mud cities!'

'Well,' observed Jarvis, 'from here on I'll be telling a few things Putz didn't see!' He rubbed his tingling

nose, and continued. 'I knew that I had sixteen hours of daylight at this season, so eight hours - eight

hundred miles - from here, I decided to turn back. I was still over Thyle, whether I or II I'm not sure, not

more than twenty-five miles into it. And right there, Putz's pet motor quit!'

'Quit? How?' Putz was solicitous.

'The atomic blast got weak. I started losing altitude right away, and suddenly there I was with a

thump right in the middle of Thyle! Smashed my nose on the window, too!' He rubbed the injured

member ruefully.

'Did you maybe try vashing der combustion chamber mit acid sulphuric?' inquired Putz. 'Sometimes

der lead giffs a secondary radiation-'

'Naw!' said Jarvis disgustedly. 'I wouldn't try that, of course - not more than ten times! Besides, the

bump flattened the landing gear and busted off the under-jets. Suppose I got the thing working - what

then? Ten miles with the blast coming right out of the bottom and I'd have melted the floor from under

me!' He rubbed his nose again. 'Lucky for me a pound only weighs seven ounces here, or I'd have been

mashed flat!'

'I could have fixed!' ejaculated the engineer. 'I bet it vas not serious.'

'Probably not,' agreed Jarvis sarcastically. 'Only it wouldn't fly. Nothing serious, but I had the choice

of waiting to be picked up or trying to walk back - eight hundred miles, and perhaps twenty days before

we had to leave! Forty miles a day! Well,' he concluded, 'I chose to walk. Just as much chance of being

picked up, and it kept me busy.'

'We'd have found you,' said Harrison.

'No doubt. Anyway, I rigged up a harness from some seat straps, and put the water tank on my

back, took a cartridge belt and revolver, and some iron rations, and started out.'

'Water tank!' exclaimed the little biologist, Leroy. 'She weigh one-quarter ton!'

'Wasn't full. Weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds earthweight, which is eighty-five here.

Then, besides, my own personal two hundred and ten pounds is only seventy on Mars, so, tank and all, I

grossed a hundred and fifty-five, or fifty-five pounds less than my everyday earthweight. I figured on that

when I undertook the forty-mile daily stroll. Oh - of course I took a thermo-skin sleeping bag for these

wintry Martian nights.

'Off I went, bouncing along pretty quickly. Eight hours of daylight meant twenty miles or more. It got

tiresome, of course - plugging along over a soft sand desert with nothing to see, not even Leroy's

crawling biopods. But an hour or so brought me to the canal - just a dryditch about four hundred feet

wide, and straight as a railroad on its own company map.

'There'd been water in it sometime, though. The ditch was covered with what looked like a nice

green lawn. Only, as I approached, the lawn moved out of my way!'

'Eh?' said Leroy.

'Yeah, it was a relative of your biopods. I caught one, a little grass-like blade about as long as my

finger, with two thin, stemmy legs.'

'He is where?' Leroy was eager.

'He is let go! I had to move, so I plowed along with the walking grass opening in front and closing

behind. And then I was out on the orange desert of Thyle again.

'I plugged steadily along, cussing the sand that made going so tiresome, and, incidentally, cussing that

cranky motor of yours, Karl. It was just before twilight that I reached the edge of Thyle, and looked

down over the gray Mare Chronium. And I knew there was seventy-five miles of that to be walked over,

and then a couple of hundred miles of that Xanthus desert, and about as much more Mare Cimmerium.

Was I pleased? I started cussing you fellows for not picking me up!'

'We were trying, you sap!' said Harrison.

'That didn't help. Well, I figured I might as well use what was left of daylight in getting down the cliff

that bounded Thyle. I found an easy place, and down I went. Mare Chronium was just the same sort of

place as this - crazy leafless plants and a bunch of crawlers; I gave it a glance and hauled out my sleeping

bag. Up to that time, you know, I hadn't seen anything worth worrying about on this half-dead world -

nothing dangerous, that is.'

'Did you?' queried Harrison.

'Did I! You'll hear about it when I come to it. Well, I was just about to turn in when suddenly I heard

the wildest sort of shenanigans!'

'Vot iss shenanigans?' inquired Putz.

'He says, 'Je ne sais quoi',' explained Leroy. 'It is to say, 'I don't know what'.'

'That's right,' agreed Jarvis. 'I didn't know what, so I sneaked over to find out. There was a racket

like a flock of crows eating a bunch of canaries - whistles, cackles, caws, trills, and what have you. I

rounded a clump of stumps, and there was Tweel!'

'Tweel?' said Harrison, and 'Tweel?' said Leroy and Putz.

'That freak ostrich,' explained the narrator. 'At least, Tweel is as near as I can pronounce it without

sputtering. He called it something like 'Trrrweerrll!'.'

'What was he doing?' asked the captain.

'He was being eaten! And squealing, of course, as any one would.'

'Eaten! By what?'

'I found out later. All I could see then was a bunch of black ropy arms tangled around what looked

like, as Putz described it to you, an ostrich. I wasn't going to interfere, naturally; if both creatures were

dangerous, I'd have one less to worry about.

'But the bird-like thing was putting up a good battle, dealing vicious blows with an eighteen-inch

beak, between screeches. And besides, I caught a glimpse or two of what was on the end of those

arms!' Jarvis shuddered. 'But the clincher was when I noticed a little black bag or case hung about the

neck of the bird-thing! It was intelligent. That or tame, I assumed. Anyway, it clinched my decision. I

pulled out my automatic and fired into what I could see of its antagonist.

'There was a flurry of tentacles and a spurt of black corruption, and then the thing, with a disgusting

sucking noise, pulled itself and its arms into a hole in the ground. The other let out a series of clacks,

staggered around on legs about as thick as golf sticks, and turned suddenly to face me. I held my weapon

ready, and the two of us stared at each other.

'The Martian wasn't a bird, really. It wasn't even bird-like, except just at first glance. It had a beak all

right, and a few feathery appendages, but the beak wasn't really a beak. It was somewhat flexible; I

could see the tip bend slowly from side to side; it was almost like a cross between a beak and a trunk. It

had four-toed feet, and four-fingered things - hands, you'd have to call them, and a little roundish body,

and a long neck ending in a tiny head - and that beak. It stood an inch or so taller than I, and - well, Putz

saw it!'

The engineer nodded. 'Ja! I saw!'

Jarvis continued. 'So - we stared at each other. Finally the creature went into a series of clackings

and twitterings and held out its hands toward me, empty. I took that as a gesture of friendship.'

'Perhaps,' suggested Harrison, 'it looked at that nose of yours and thought you were its brother!'

'Huh! You can be funny without talking! Anyway, I put up my gun and said 'Aw, don't mention it,' or

something of the sort, and the thing came over and we were pals.

'By that time, the sun was pretty low and I knew that I'd better build a fire or get into my

thermo-skin. I decided on the fire. I picked a spot at the base of the Thyle cliff where the rock could

reflect a little heat on my back. I started breaking off chunks of this desiccated Martian vegetation, and

my companion caught the idea and brought in an armful. I reached for a match, but the Martian fished

into his pouch and brought out something that looked like a glowing coal; one touch of it, and the fire was

blazing - and you all know what a job we have starting a fire in this atmosphere!

'And that bag of his!' continued the narrator. 'That was a manufactured article, my friends; press an

end and she popped open - press the middle and she sealed so perfectly you couldn't see the line. Better

than zippers.

'Well, we stared at the fire for a while and I decided to attempt some sort of communication with the

Martian. I pointed at myself and said 'Dick'; he caught the drift immediately, stretched a bony claw at me

and repeated 'Tick.' Then I pointed at him, and he gave that whistle I called Tweel; I can't imitate his

accent. Things were going smoothly; to emphasize the names, I repeated 'Dick,' and then, pointing at him,

'Tweel.'

'There we stuck! He gave some clacks that sounded negative, and said something like 'P-p-p-root.'

And that was just the beginning; I was always 'Tick,' but as for him - part of the time he was 'Tweel,' and

part of the time he was 'P-p-p-proot,' and part of the time he was sixteen other noises!

'We just couldn't connect. I tried 'rock,' and I tried 'star,' and 'tree,' and 'fire.' and Lord knows what

else, and try as I would, I couldn't get a single word! Nothing was the same for two successive minutes,

and if that's a language, I'm an alchemist. Finally I gave it up and called him Tweel, and that seemed to

do. 'But Tweel hung on to some of my words. He remembered a couple of them, which I suppose is a

great achievement if you're used to a language you have to make up as you go along. But I couldn't get

the hang of his talk; either I missed some subtle point or we just didn't think alike - and I rather believe

the latter view.

'I've other reasons for believing that. After a while I gave up the language business, and tried

mathematics. I scratched two plus two equals four on the ground, and demonstrated it with pebbles.

Again Tweel caught the idea, and informed me that three plus three equals six. Once more we seemed to

be getting somewhere.

'So, knowing that Tweel had at least a grammar school education, I drew a circle for the sun,

pointing first at it, and then at the last glow of the sun. Then I sketched in Mercury, and Venus, and

Mother Earth, and Mars, and finally, pointing to Mars, I swept my hand around in a sort of inclusive

gesture to indicate that Mars was our current environment. I was working up to putting over the idea that

my home was on the earth.

'Tweel understood my diagram all right. He poked his beak at it, and with a great deal of trilling and

clucking, he added Deimos and Phobos to Mars, and then sketched in the earth's moon!

'Do you see what that proves? It proves that Tweel's race uses telescopes - that they're civilized!'

'Does not!' snapped Harrison. 'The moon is visible from here as a fifth magnitude star. They could

see its revolution with the naked eye.'

'The moon, yes!' said Jarvis. 'You've missed my point. Mercury isn't visible! And Tweel knew of

Mercury because he placed the Moon at the third planet, not the second. If he didn't know Mercury,

he'd put the earth second, and Mars third, instead of fourth! See?'

'Humph!' said Harrison.

'Anyway,' proceeded Jarvis, 'I went on with my lesson. Things were going smoothly, and it looked as

if I could put the idea over. I pointed at the earth on my diagram, and then at myself, and then, to clinch

it, I pointed to myself and then to the earth itself shining bright green almost at the zenith.

'Tweel set up such an excited clacking that I was certain he understood. He jumped up and down,

and suddenly he pointed at himself and then at the sky, and then at himself and at the sky again. He

pointed at his middle and then at Arcturus, at his head and then at Spica, at his feet and then at half a

dozen stars, while I just gaped at him. Then, all of a sudden, he gave a tremendous leap. Man, what a

hop! He shot straight up into the starlight, seventy-five feet if an inch! I saw him silhouetted against the

sky, saw him turn and come down at me head first, and land smack on his beak like a javelin! There he

stuck square in the center of my sun-circle in the sand - a bull's eye!'

'Nuts!' observed the captain. 'Plain nuts!'

'That's what I thought, too! I just stared at him openmouthed while he pulled his head out of the sand

and stood up. Then I figured he'd missed my point, and I went through the whole blamed rigmarole again,

and it ended the same way, with Tweel on his nose in the middle of my picture!'

'Maybe it's a religious rite,' suggested Harrison.

'Maybe,' said Jarvis dubiously. 'Well, there we were. We could exchange ideas up to a certain point,

and then - blooey! Something in us was different, unrelated; I don't doubt that Tweel thought me just as

screwy as I thought him. Our minds simply looked at the world from different viewpoints, and perhaps

his viewpoint is as true as ours. But - we couldn't get together, that's all. Yet, in spite of all difficulties, I

liked Tweel, and I have a queer certainty that he liked me.'

'Nuts!' repeated the captain. 'Just daffy!'

'Yeah? Wait and see. A couple of times I've thought that perhaps we-' He paused, and then resumed

his narrative. 'Anyway, I finally gave it up, and got into my thermo-skin to sleep. The fire hadn't kept me

any too warm, but that damned sleeping bag did. Got stuffy five minutes after I closed myself in. I opened

it a little and bingo! Some eighty-below-zero air hit my nose, and that's when I got this pleasant little

frostbite to add to the bump I acquired during the crash of my rocket.

'I don't know what Tweel made of my sleeping. He sat around, but when I woke up, he was gone.

I'd just crawled out of my bag, though, when I heard some twittering, and there he came, sailing down

from that three-story Thyle cliff to alight on his beak beside me. I pointed to myself and toward the north,

and he pointed at himself and toward the south, and when I loaded up and started away, he came along.

'Man, how he traveled! A hundred and fifty feet at a jump, sailing through the air stretched out like a

spear, and landing on his beak. He seemed surprised at my plodding, but after a few moments he fell in

beside me, only every few minutes he'd go into one of his leaps, and stick his nose into the sand a block

ahead of me. Then he'd come shooting back at me; it made me nervous at first to see that beak of his

coming at me like a spear, but he always ended in the sand at my side.

'So the two of us plugged along across the Mare Chronium. Same sort of place as this - same crazy

plants and same little green biopods growing in the sand, or crawling out of your way. We talked - not

that we understood each other, you know, but just for company. I sang songs, and I suspected Tweel

did too; at least, some of his trillings and twitterings had a subtle sort of rhythm.

'Then, for variety, Tweel would display his smattering of English words. He'd point to an outcropping

and say 'rock,' and point to a pebble and say it again; or he'd touch my arm and say 'Tick,' and then

repeat it. He seemed terrifically amused that the same word meant the same thing twice in succession, or

that the same word could apply to two different objects. It set me wondering if perhaps his language

wasn't like the primitive speech of some earth people - you know, Captain, like the Negritoes, for

instance, who haven't any generic words. No word for food or water or man - words for good food and

bad food, or rainwater and seawater, or strong man and weak man - but no names for general classes.

They're too primitive to understand that rain water and seawater are just different aspects of the same

thing. But that wasn't the case with Tweel; it was just that we were somehow mysteriously different - our

minds were alien to each other. And yet - we liked each other!'

'Looney, that's all,' remarked Harrison. 'That's why you two were so fond of each other.'

'Well, I like you!' countered Jarvis wickedly. 'Anyway,' he resumed, 'don't get the idea that there was

anything screwy about Tweel. In fact, I'm not so sure but that he couldn't teach our highly praised human

intelligence a trick or two. Oh, he wasn't an intellectual superman, I guess; but don't overlook the point

that he managed to understand a little of my mental workings, and I never even got a glimmering of his.'

'Because he didn't have any!' suggested the captain, while Putz and Leroy blinked attentively.

'You can judge of that when I'm through,' said Jarvis. 'Well, we plugged along across the Mare

Chronium all that day, and all the next. Mare Chronium - Sea of Time! Say, I was willing to agree with

Schiaparelli's name by the end of that march! Just that gray, endless plain of weird plants, and never a

sign of any other life. It was so monotonous that I was even glad to see the desert of Xanthus toward the

evening of the second day.

'I was fair worn out, but Tweel seemed as fresh as ever, for all I never saw him drink or eat. I think

he could have crossed the Mare Chronium in a couple of hours with those block-long nosedives of his,

but he stuck along with me. I offered him some water once or twice; he took the cup from me and

sucked the liquid into his beak, and then carefully squirted it all back into the cup and gravely returned it.

'Just as we sighted Xanthus, or the cliffs that bounded it, one of those nasty sand clouds blew along,

not as bad as the one we had here, but mean to travel against. I pulled the transparent flap of my

thermo-skin bag across my face and managed pretty well, and I noticed that Tweel used some feathery

appendages growing like a mustache at the base of his beak to cover his nostrils, and some similar fuzz to

shield his eyes.'

'He is a desert creature,' ejaculated the little biologist, Leroy.

'Huh? Why?

'He drink no water - he is adapted for sand storm-'

'Proves nothing! There's not enough water to waste anywhere on this desiccated pill called Mars.

We'd call all of it desert on earth, you know.' He paused. 'Anyway, after the sand storm blew over, a

little wind kept blowing in our faces, not strong enough to stir the sand. But suddenly things came drifting

along from the Xanthus cliffs - small, transparent spheres, for all the world like glass tennis balls! But light

- they were almost light enough to float even in this thin air - empty, too; at least, I cracked open a couple

and nothing came out but a bad smell. I asked Tweel about them, but all he said was 'No, no, no,' which

I took to mean that he knew nothing about them. So they went bouncing by like tumbleweeds, or like

soap bubbles, and we plugged on toward Xanthus. Tweel pointed at one of the crystal balls once and

said 'rock,' but I was too tired to argue with him. Later I discovered what he meant.

'We came to the bottom of the Xanthus cliffs finally, when there wasn't much daylight left. I decided

to sleep on the plateau if possible; anything dangerous, I reasoned, would be more likely to prowl

through the vegetation of the Mare Chronium than the sand of Xanthus. Not that I'd seen a single sign of

menace, except the rope-armed black thing that had trapped Tweel, and apparently that didn't prowl at

all, but lured its victims within reach. It couldn't lure me while I slept, especially as Tweel didn't seem to

sleep at all, but simply sat patiently around all night. I wondered how the creature had managed to trap

Tweel, but there wasn't any way of asking him. I found that out too, later; it's devilish!

'However, we were ambling around the base of the Xanthus barrier looking for an easy spot to

climb. At least, I was! Tweel could have leaped it easily, for the cliffs were lower than Thyle - perhaps

sixty feet. I found a place and started up, swearing at the water tank strapped to my back - it didn't

bother me except when climbing - and suddenly I heard a sound that I thought I recognized!

'You know how deceptive sounds are in this thin air. A shot sounds like the pop of a cork. But this

sound was the drone of a rocket, and sure enough, there went our second auxiliary about ten miles to

westward, between me and the sunset!'

'Vas me!' said Putz. 'I hunt for you.'

'Yeah; I knew that, but what good did it do me? I hung on to the cliff and yelled and waved with one

hand. Tweel saw it too, and set up a trilling and twittering, leaping to the top of the barrier and then high

into the air. And while I watched, the machine droned on into the shadows to the south.

'I scrambled to the top of the cliff. Tweel was still pointing and trilling excitedly, shooting up toward

the sky and coming down head-on to stick upside down on his back in the sand. I pointed toward the

south, and at myself, and he said, 'Yes - Yes - Yes'; but somehow I gathered that he thought the flying

thing was a relative of mine, probably a parent. Perhaps I did his intellect an injustice; I think now that I

did.'I was bitterly disappointed by the failure to attract attention. I pulled out my thermo-skin and

crawled into it, as the night chill was already apparent. Tweel stuck his beak into the sand and drew up

his legs and arms and looked for all the world like one of those leafless shrubs out there. I think he stayed

that way all night.'

'Protective mimicry!' ejaculated Leroy. 'See? He is desert creature!'

'In the morning,' resumed Jarvis, 'we started off again. We hadn't gone a hundred yards into Xanthus

when I saw something queer! This is one thing Putz didn't photograph, I'll wager!

'There was a line of little pyramids - tiny ones, not more than six inches high, stretching across

Xanthus as far as I could see! Little buildings made of pygmy bricks, they were, hollow inside and

truncated, or at least broken at the top and empty. I pointed at them and said 'What?' to Tweel, but he

gave some negative twitters to indicate, I suppose, that he didn't know. So off we went, following the

row of pyramids because they ran north, and I was going north.

'Man, we trailed that line for hours! After a while, I noticed another queer thing: they were getting

larger. Same number of bricks in each one, but the bricks were larger.

'By noon they were shoulder high. I looked into a couple - all just the same, broken at the top and

empty. I examined a brick or two as well; they were silica, and old as creation itself!'

'They were weathered-edges rounded. Silica doesn't weather easily even on earth, and in this

climate!'

'How old you think?'

'Fifty thousands hundred thousand years. How can I tell? The little ones we saw in the morning were

older - perhaps ten times as old. Crumbling. How old would that make them? Half a million years? Who

knows?' Jarvis paused a moment. 'Well,' he resumed, 'we followed the line. Tweel pointed at them and

said 'rock' once or twice, but he'd done that many times before. Besides, he was more or less right about

these.

'I tried questioning him. I pointed at a pyramid and asked 'People?' and indicated the two of us. He

set up a negative sort of clucking and said, 'No, no, no. No one - one - two. No two - two - four,'

G. Stanley Weinbaum - The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum

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