William Tenn - The Sickness

For the record, it was a Russian, Nicolai Belov, who found it and brought it back to the ship. He found it in the course of a routine geological survey he was making some six miles from the ship the day after they landed. For what it might be worth, he was driving a caterpillar jeep at the time, a caterpillar jeep that had been made in Detroit, U.S.A.

He radioed the ship almost immediately. Preston OBrien, the navigator, was in the control room at the time, as usual, checking his electronic computers against a dummy return course he had set up. He took the call. Belov, of course, spoke in English; OBrien in Russian.

OBrien, Belov said excitedly, once identification had been established. Guess what Ive found? Martians! A whole city!

OBrien snapped the computer relays shut, leaned back in the bucket seat, and ran his fingers through his crewcut red hair. Theyd had no right to, of course but somehow theyd all taken it for granted that they were alone on the chilly, dusty, waterless planet. Finding it wasnt so gave him a sudden acute attack of claustrophobia. It was like looking up from his thesis work in an airy, silent college library to find it had filled with talkative freshmen just released from a class in English composition. Or that disagreeable moment at the beginning of the expedition, back in Benares, when hed come out of a nightmare in which hed been drifting helplessly by himself in a starless black vacuum to find Kolevitchs powerful right arm hanging down from the bunk above him and the air filled with sounds of thick Slavic snores. It wasnt just that he was jumpy, hed assured himself; after all, everyone was jumpy . . . these days.

Hed never liked being crowded. Or being taken by surprise. He rubbed his hands together irritably over the equations hed scribbled a moment before. Of course, come to think of it, if anyone was being crowded, it was the Martians. There was that.

OBrien cleared his throat and asked:

Live Martians?

No, of course not. How could you have live Martians in the cupful of atmosphere this planet has left? The only things alive in the place are the usual lichens and maybe a desert flatworm or two, the same as those we found near the ship. The last of the Martians must have died at least a million years ago. But the citys intact, OBrien, intact and almost untouched!

For all his ignorance of geology, the navigator was incredulous. Intact? You mean it hasnt been weathered down to sand in a million years?

Not a bit, Belov chortled. You see its underground. I saw this big sloping hole and couldnt figure it: it didnt go with the terrain. Also there was a steady breeze blowing out of the hole, keeping the sand from piling up inside. So I nosed the jeep in, rode downhill for about fifty, sixty yardsand there it was, a spacious, empty Martian city, looking like Moscow a thousand, ten thousand years from now. Its beautiful, OBrien, beautiful!

Dont touch anything, OBrien warned. Moscow! Like Moscow yet!

You think Im crazy? Im just taking a couple of shots with my Rollei. Whatever machinery is operating that blower system is keeping the lights on; its almost as bright as daylight down here. But what a place! Boulevards like colored spider webs. Houses likelike Talk about the Valley of the Kings, talk about Harappa! Theyre nothing, nothing at all to this find. You didnt know I was an amateur archaeologist, did you, OBrien? Well, I am. And let me tell you, Schliemann would have given his eyeshis eyes!for this discovery! Its magnificent!

OBrien grinned at his enthusiasm. At moments like this you couldnt help feeling that the Russkys were all right, that it would all work outsomehow. Congratulations, he said. Take your pictures and get back fast. Ill tell Captain Ghose.

But listen, OBrien, thats not all. These peoplethese Martiansthey were like us! They were human!

Human? Did you say human? Like us?

Belays delighted laugh irradiated the earphones. Thats exactly the way I felt. Amazing, isnt it? They were human, like us. If anything, even more so. Theres a pair of nude statues in the middle of a square that the entrance opens into. Phidias or Praxiteles or Michelangelo wouldnt have been ashamed of those statues, let me tell you. And they were made back in the Pleistocene or Pliocene, when sabertooth tigers were still prowling the Earth!

OBrien grunted and switched off. He strolled to the control room porthole, one of the two that the ship boasted, and stared out at the red desert that humped and hillocked itself endlessly, repetitiously, until, at the furthest extremes of vision, it disappeared in a sifting, sandy mist.

This was Mars. A dead planet. Dead, that is, except for the most primitive forms of vegetable and animal life, forms which could survive on the minute rations of water and air that their bitterly hostile world allotted them. But once there had been men here, men like himself, and Nicolai Belov. They had had art and science as well as, no doubt, differing philosophies. They had been here once, these men of Mars, and were here no longer. Had they too been set a problem in coexistenceand had they failed to solve it?

Two space-suited figures clumped into sight from under the ship. OBrien recognized them through their helmet bubbles. The shorter man was Fyodor Guranin, Chief Engineer; the other was Tom Smathers, his First Assistant. They had evidently been going over the rear jets, examining them carefully for any damage incurred on the outward journey. In eight days, the first Terrestrial Expedition to Mars would start home: every bit of equipment had to be functioning at optimum long before that.

Smathers saw OBrien through the porthole and waved. The navigator waved back. Guranin glanced upwards curiously, hesitated a moment, then waved too. Now OBrien hesitated. Hell, this was silly. Why not? He waved at Guranin, a long, friendly, rotund wave.

Then he smiled to himself. Chose should only see them now! The tall captain would be grinning like a lunatic out of his aristocratic, coffee-colored face. Poor guy! He was living on emotional crumbs like these.

And that reminded him. He left the control room and looked in at the galley where Semyon Kolevitch, the Assistant Navigator and Chief Cook, was opening cans in preparation for their lunch. Any idea where the captain is? he inquired in Russian.

The man glanced at him coolly, finished the can he was working on, tossed the round flat top into the wall disposer-hole, and then replied with a succinct English No.

Out in the corridor again, he met Dr. Alvin Schneider on the way to the galley to work out his turn at K.P. Have you seen Captain Chose, Doc?

Hes down in the engine room, waiting to have a conference with Guranin, the chubby little ships doctor told him. Both men spoke in Russian.

OBrien nodded and kept going. A few minutes later, he pushed open the engineroom door and came upon Captain Sabodh Chose, late of Benares Polytechnic Institute, Benares, India, examining a large wall chart of the ships jet system. Despite his youthlike every other man on the ship, Chose was under twenty-fivethe fantastic responsibilities he was carrying had ground two black holes into the flesh under the captains eyes. They made him look perpetually strained. Which he was, OBrien reflected, and no two ways about it.

He gave the captain Belovs message.

Hm, Ghose said, frowning. I hope he has enough sense not to He broke off sharply as he realized he had spoken in English. Im terribly sorry, OBrien! he said in Russian, his eyes looking darker than ever. Ive been standing here thinking about Guranin; I must have thought I was talking to him. Excuse me.

Think nothing of it, OBrien murmured. It was my pleasure.

Ghose smiled, then turned it off abruptly. I better not let it happen again. As I was saying, I hope Belov has enough sense to control his curiosity and not touch anything.