The Project Gutenberg eBook of Consulate

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Title: Consulate

Author: William Tenn

Illustrator: Lawrence Sterne Stevens

Release date: January 17, 2023 [eBook #69821]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Standard Magazines, Inc, 1948

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONSULATE ***

CONSULATE

BY WILLIAM TENN

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Thrilling Wonder Stories June 1948.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

CHAPTER I

Sail in the Sloop

I see by the papers where Professor Fronac says that interplanetary travel will have to go through what he calls a period of incubation. He says that after reaching the moon, we now have hit so many new problems that we must sit down and puzzle out new theories to fit them before we can build a ship that will get us to Venus or Mars.

Of course, the Army and Navy are supervising all rocket experiments these days, and the professor's remarks are censored by them. That makes his speeches hard to understand.

But you know and I know what Professor Fronac is really saying.

The Second Martian Expedition was a complete flop. Just like the First Martian Expedition and the Venusian ones. The ships came back with all the machinery working fine and all the crews grinning with health.

But they hadn't been to Mars. They couldn't make it.

The professor goes on to say how wonderful it is that science is so wonderful, because no matter how great the obstacles, the good old scientific approach will eventually overcome them. This, he claims, is the drawing of unprejudiced conclusions from all the data available.

Well, if that's what Professor Fronac really believes, he sure didn't act like it last August when I went all the way to Arizona to tell him just what he'd been doing wrong in those latest rocket experiments. Let me tell you, even if I am only a small-town grocer and he's a big physics professor with a Nobel Prize under his belt, he had no call to threaten me with a jail sentence just because I slipped past the Army guards at the field and hid in his bedroom! I was there only because I wanted to tell him he was on the wrong track.

If it hadn't been for poor "Fatty" Myers and that option on the Winthrop store which he's going to lose by Christmas, I'd have walked out on the whole business right then and kept my mouth shut. After all, it's no skin off my nose if we never go any further than the moon. I'm happier right here on terra firma, and I do mean terra. But, if I convince scientists, maybe I'll convince Edna.

So, for the last time, Professor Fronac and anybody else who's interested—if you really want to go places in the Solar System, you have to come down here to Massachusetts. You have to take a boat out on Cassowary Cove at night, every night, and wait. I'll help if you act halfway decent—and I'm sure Fatty Myers will do what he can—but it'll still add up to a whole lot of patience. Shoin wasn't dreefed in a riz. So they say.

Fatty had just told his assistant to take charge of the gas station that evening in March and walked slowly past the Winthrop store up to my grocery window. He waited till my wife was busy with a customer; then he caught my eye and pointed at his watch.

I shucked off my apron and pulled the heavy black sweater over my head. I had my raincoat in one hand and my fishing tackle in the other, and was just tip-toeing out when Edna saw me.

She came boiling around the counter and blocked the door with her right arm. "And where do you think you're going and leaving me to do the work of two?" she asked in that special sin-chasing voice she saves for my tip-toeing moments.

"Aw, Edna!" I said, trying to work up a grin. "I told you. Fatty's bought a new thirty-foot sloop he wants me to make sure will be in shape for the tourist trade this summer. It's dangerous for one man to sail a new boat alone at night."

"It's twice as dangerous for him with you along." She glared the grin off my face. "For the past thirty years, ever since we graduated from school, one unfailing recipe for trouble has been Paul Garland and Fatty Myers doing anything together. I still haven't forgotten the time he came over to help you install the new gas heater in our basement. You were in the hospital for five weeks and the street still looks crooked."

"The flashlight went out, Edna, and Fatty just struck a match to—"

"And what about the time, Mr. Garland," Louisa Capek, the customer, hit me from behind, "that you and Mr. Myers volunteered to shingle the church roof and fell through it on top of the minister? For eight Sundays he had to deliver sermons with his back in a cast and every one of them 'answering a fool according to his folly!'"

"How were we to know the beams were rotten? We volunteered for the job."

"You're not going, and that's final," Edna came in fast with the finisher. "So you might as well get that sweater off and the apron back on and start uncrating those cans of sardines. The two of you out on Cassowary Cove at night in a sailboat might bring on anything, including a tidal wave."

I gave Fatty the high sign, and he opened the door and squeezed in just as we had agreed he'd do in case I had trouble getting away.

"Hello, Edna and Miss Capek," he said in that cheerful belly-voice of his. "Every time I see how beautiful you look, Edna, I could kick myself around town for letting Paul steal you away from me. Ready, Paul? Paul and I are going to do a spot of fishing tonight. Maybe we can bring a nice four-pound fish back to you. Do you think you could fit it into one of those pots I gave you last Christmas, hey?"

My wife cocked her head and studied him. "Well, I think I could. But you won't be out past midnight?"

"Have him back by eleven—word of honor," Fatty promised as he grabbed me and squeezed back through the doorway.

"Remember, Paul!" Edna called after me. "Eleven o'clock! And you needn't come home if you're ten minutes late!"

That's the kind of pal Fatty was. Any wonder that I knock myself out trying to get this story told where it'll do the most good? Of course, he and Edna had been kind of sweet on each other back in school and it had been nip and tuck between us which one she'd marry. No one knew till we both got drunk at Louisa Capek's birthday party that we'd settled the problem, Fatty and I, by each catching a frog out of the creek and jumping them. Mine jumped the furthest—nine and a half feet—so I got Edna. Fatty stayed single and got fatter.

While he was starting the car, Fatty asked me what I thought of the Winthrop store as a buy for nine thousand. The Winthrop store was a big radio and electrical gadget place between my grocery and Fatty's corner service station.

I told him I thought it was a good buy for nine thousand if anyone who had the money wanted such a place.

"Well, I want it, Paul. I just paid old man Winthrop five hundred dollars for an option until Christmas. Between what I have in the bank and a mortgage I think I can raise on my service station, I'll have the rest. It's the coming thing in the new age."

"What's the coming thing in what new age?"

"All those scientific gadgets. The Army has just announced it's established a base on the moon and they're going to equip it with a radio transmitter. Think of it, Paul! In a little while, we'll be getting radio programs from the moon! Then, we'll be tuning in on the latest news from Mars and Venus, the latest exploration on Mercury, the latest discovery on Pluto. People will be crazy to buy the new sets they'll need to receive that distance, kids'll be fooling around with all the new gimmicks that'll be coming out because of the inventions interplanetary travel will develop."

I watched the country side get dark as we bounced along toward the cove. "Meanwhile, we don't have interplanetary travel. All we have is the moon, and it don't look as if we're going further. Did you read about the Second Venusian Expedition coming back after they got two million miles out? The same thing's happened to them before, and we can't seem to make Mars either."

Fatty slapped the wheel impatiently. His jalopy swerved off the road and almost hit a fence post. "So what? They keep trying, don't they? Don't forget, the Fronac Drive's only been around for two years, and all scientists agree that, with the Drive, we can eventually go anywhere in the Solar System—maybe even to the stars after a while. It's just a matter of perfecting it, of getting the kinks out. We'll reach the planets, and in our lifetimes too. How do you know what kind of crazy problems they run into two or three million miles from the Earth?"

Naturally, I had to admit I didn't know. All the newspapers had said was that both the First Martian and the two Venusian Expeditions had "experienced difficulties and been forced to return." I shut up and tried to think out another argument. That's all it was: the argument for me, and a business proposition for Fatty Myers. If you remember, back in March, the newspapers and magazines were still full of feature articles on "the expanding empire of man."

CHAPTER II

Up They Go

We reached the cove and Fatty locked his car. The sloop was all ready to go, as we'd fixed her up the night before. When we shoved off, she handled like a dream that Lipton might have had as a boy. She was gaff-rigged, but not too broad of beam so that we couldn't run a little if we wanted to. Fatty handled the tiller and I crewed. That way, we only needed ballast forward.

Neither of us were crazy about fishing. We'd made that up as an excuse for Edna. Sailing in the moonlight in the great, big loneliness of Cassowary Cove, with the smells of the Atlantic resting quietly around us—that was all the wallop we wanted.

"But suppose," I said, as soon as I'd trimmed sail, "suppose we got to Venus and there's a kind of animal there that finds us more appetizing than chili con carne. And suppose they're smarter than we are and have disintegrators and heat-rays like that fellow described in the story. And the minute they see us, they'll yell, 'Oh, boy—rations!' and come piling down on Earth.

"That'll do your business a lot of good, won't it? Why, when we get through driving them back off the planet, won't be a man or woman who'll be able to think of interplanetary travel without spitting. I go along with Reverend Pophurst: we shouldn't poke our noses into strange places where they were never meant to go or we'll get them bitten off."

Fatty thought a while and patted his stomach with his free hand like he always does when I score a good point. Most folks in town don't know it, but Fatty and I usually get so lathered up in arguments just before Election Day, that we always vote opposite tickets, no matter what.

"First place, if we hit animals smart enough to have disintegrators and suchlike when we don't have them, and if they want this planet, they're going to take it away from us, and no movie hero in a tight jumper and riding boots is going to stop them at the last minute by discovering that the taste of pickled beets kills 'em dead. If they're smarter than we are and have more stuff, we'll be licked, that's all. We just won't be around any more, like the dinosaur. Second place, didn't you read Professor Fronac's article in last week's Sunday Supplement? He says there can't be any smarter animals—Say! What'd you call that? There, over to starboard?"

I turned and looked off to the right.

Where a streak of moonlight grinned on the water between the lips of the cove, something green and bulbous was coming in fast. It looked like the open top of an awfully big umbrella. I judged it to be thirty-five, forty feet across. It was floating straight for Mike's Casino on the southern lip where lights were blazing, music was banging, and people generally were having themselves a whale of a time.

"Seaweed," I guessed. "Bunch of seaweed all scrunched up in an ice-jam. Jam melted or broke up and it comes floating down here in one lump."

"Never saw that much seaweed in these parts." Fatty squinted at it. "Nor in that shape. And that bunch came into this cove; it didn't float in. The ocean's too quiet for it to have so much speed. Know what I think it is?"

"The first summer tourist?"

"No! A Portuguese Man-Of-War. They're jellyfish. They have a bladder, kind of, that floats on the surface, and long filaments underneath that trail into the water and catch fish. I've read about them but never expected to see one. Pretty rare around here. And that's a real big fellow. Want to take a look?"

"Not on your life! It may be dangerous. Besides, this is the first time in a month Edna's let me go out with you. She doesn't know exactly what's going to happen, but she's sure something is. I want to be home safe and sound by eleven. What were you saying about smarter animals, Fatty? On other planets?"

"It can't be dangerous," he muttered, still keeping his eyes on its track. "Only catches very small fish. But—Like I was saying, if there was something on Neptune, say which is more advanced than we are, why then it'd be smart enough to have space travel and they'd be visiting us instead of us them. Look how we've explored that planet. We've gone down into the ground nine miles and more, across every sea and into every ocean, back and forth over every piece of land, and now up into the air. If there was another kind of intelligent life on this Earth, we'd know it by now. Stands to reason anybody else'd do the same. So, like Professor Fronac says, we must conclude—Am I wrong, or is that Man-Of-War coming at us now?"

It was. The green mass had turned in a great, rippling circle and was headed for our sloop, but fast.

Fatty slammed the tiller hard to starboard and I leaped for the sails. They went slack.

"What a time for the wind to drop!" he moaned. "There's a pair of emergency oars in the—Too late, it's abreast! You'll find a hatchet in the cockpit. See if you can—"

"I thought you said it wasn't dangerous," I puffed, as I scrambled back with the hatchet.

Fatty had dropped the tiller and picked up a marlin-spike. He stood up next to me and stared at the floating mound alongside. Both it and our boat seemed to be perfectly still. We could see water rushing past us. Far off, in Mike's Casino, the band was playing "Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?" I stopped being sad and got sentimental. That song always makes me sentimental.

"It isn't dangerous," Fatty admitted. "But I just remembered that the Portuguese Man-Of-War has batteries of stingers that it uses to catch fish. They can hurt a man sometimes, too. And in anything this big—Of course, we're inside a boat and it can't get at us."

"You hope. Something tells me that I won't be home at eleven tonight. And if that's just supposed to be an air-filled bladder, what are those black things floating in it? Eyes?"

"They sure look like eyes. Feel like eyes." We watched the black dots flickering over the green surface and began to shuffle our feet. We felt as if a crowd of people were watching us undress in Courthouse Square. I know we both did, because we compared notes later. We had plenty of time—later.

"Know what?" Fatty said. "I don't think it's a Portuguese Man-Of-War, after all. It's too big and green, and I don't remember seeing anything like those black dots inside the air bladder in any of those pictures I saw. And it doesn't seem to have any filaments hanging from it. Besides, it moves too fast."

"Then what is it?"

Fatty patted his stomach and looked at it. He opened his mouth.

I forgot to ask him what he was going to say just then, and he never told me. He didn't say it anyway. He just went "Beep?" and sat down hard. I also sat down hard, only I went more like "Foof?"

The sloop had gone straight up in the air for about fifteen feet. As soon as I could, I jumped up and helped Fatty wheeze to a standing position.

We both gulped. The gulps seemed to get stuck going down.

Even though we were fifteen feet above the surface of the cove, the boat was still in the water. A little cup of water, that is, extending twenty feet out on both port and starboard and only about five feet on the bow and stern.

Beyond the water, there was a kind of gray haze that was transparent enough for me to see the lights of Mike's Casino where they were still playing "Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?" This gray haze went all the way around, covering the mast and the gaff tops.

When we rushed over to the side and looked down, we saw it came around under the keel too. Solid stuff, that gray haze—it contained us, the boat and enough water to float it.

Somebody had taken an awfully big bite out of Cassowary Cove, and we were included. We knew who that somebody was. We looked around for him.

The big slob was busy outside the gray haze. First, he was under the keel, fastening a little box to the bottom of the haze. Then he squirmed around to the top, directly over the mast and stuck another doohickey up there. Those little black dots were still bubbling around inside his green body, but they didn't make me feel queer any more.

I had other things to feel queer about. "Do you think we might try yelling at him?" Fatty asked in the kind of whisper he uses in church. "Whatever he is, he looks intelligent."

"What could you yell?"

He scratched his head. "I dunno. How about, 'Friend. Me friend. No hurt. Peace.' Think he'd understand?"

"He'd think you were an Indian in the movies, that's what. Why should you think he understands English? Let's drop our weapons and raise both our hands. That gesture's universal, I read."

We kept our hands over our heads until they got tired. The lump of green jelly had moved from the box he had fixed over the mast to a position in line with the slant of the gaff. He boiled around for a few seconds until a section of the gray haze began to sparkle with color; a lot of colors, shifting in and out of each other. Then, as soon as the patch was coruscating nicely, he dropped off the side and hit the water fifteen feet below.

He hit the water without a splash.

He zoomed along the surface, faster than I could breathe the initials J. R., for about half a mile, paused just outside the cove—and dropped out of sight. There wasn't a ripple to show the path he'd been traveling, or where he'd sunk. All that was left was our floating gray bubble. With us, inside.

"Hey!" Fatty began yammering. "You can't do this to me! Come back and let us out, d'ye hear? Hey, you in that green jelly, come back here!"

I got him quiet by pointing out that the animated shrimp cocktail was no longer with us. Also, there didn't seem much cause for worry. If he'd wanted to do us any harm, he could pretty much have done it while he was close up, considering the brand of parlor tricks he had already demonstrated. Let well enough alone, I argued; I was satisfied to be alive and unwell, while the bubble-blowing object did a Weismuller somewhere in the Atlantic.

"But we can't stay here all night," Fatty complained. "Suppose someone from town could see us—why, with our reputation, they'd laugh us clear into the comic strips. Whyn't you shinny up the mast and stick an arm into that stuff, Paul? Find out what it's made of, maybe make a hole and wriggle through?"

That sounded reasonable. We sure had to do something. He bent down and gave me a boost. I wrapped my legs around the mast, grabbed handfuls of sail and dragged myself to the top. The mast ended just under the box outside of the gray haze.

"There's a purring noise coming from the box," I called down to Fatty. "Nothing inside it but silver wheels going round and round like the one in an electric meter. Only they're not attached to anything. They're floating at all kinds of angles to each other and spinning at different speeds."

I heard Fatty curse uncertainly, and I punched up into the grayness. I hurt my fist. I pulled my arm back, massaged it as my feet slipped and scrambled on the mast and sail, and stabbed up with a forefinger. I hurt my forefinger.

"Gray stuff hard?" Fatty asked.

Unprintably unprintable it was hard. I told him.

"Come on down and get the hatchet. You might be able to chop a hole."

"I don't think so. This fog is almost transparent and I don't think it's made of any material we know. Fact is, I don't think it's made of any material."

Above my head, the purring got a little louder. There was a similar noise coming from the bottom of the bubble where the other box was located.

I took a chance and, holding myself by one arm and one leg, I swung out and peered at the spot of shifting color near the box. It looked like the spectrum you see in an oil puddle—you know, colors changing their position while you look at them. I pushed up against the gray near the colored patch. It didn't give either.

The nasty thing was I had the feeling that it wasn't like trying to push a hole through a sheet of steel; it was more as if I were trying to drive a nail into an argument, or break a sermon across my knee. Kind of a joke in a scary sort of way.

"Hand up the hatchet," I called. "I don't see how it'll do any good, but I'll try it anyway."

Fatty lifted the hatchet high and stood up on his toes. I started to slide down the mast. The purring from the box became a whine.

Just as my stretching fingers closed around the hatchet handle, the box on top and the box on the bottom of the boat began going clinkety-clangety-clung. It reached clung and I was no longer doing it to the mast. I was on top of Fatty and he was spread-eagled on the deck.

I had a glimpse of the hatchet sailing over the side.

"Wh-what f-for you wanted to d-do th-that," Fatty gasped as I rolled off him and we both groaned upright. "C-couldn't you tell me you w-wanted to get down fast? I'd have moved away, honest!"

"Wasn't my fault," I said. "I was pushed."

Fatty wasn't listening. He was staring at something else. And, when I noticed it, so was I.

A lot of sea-water had splashed into the cockpit. Some of it had wet us.

All of the water on deck rolled into a little lake abaft of the mast, the water on our bodies dripping down and joining it. Then, the entire puddle rolled to port and spilled off the deck. The boat was perfectly dry again. So were we.

"This I'm beginning not to like," Fatty commented hoarsely. I nodded my head, too. Under the circumstances I didn't feel easy in my mind.

Stepping very delicately, as if he were afraid he might fracture a commandment, Fatty moved over to the side and looked out. He shook his head and looked down.

"Paul," he said after a while in a low voice. "Paul, would you come here? Something I—" he choked.

I took a look. I gulped, one of those really long gulps that start down from your Adam's apple and wind up squishing out between your toes.

Below us, under the water and the gray haze, was a slew of darkness. Beyond that, at a respectable distance, I could see the Atlantic Ocean and the New England coast line with Cape Cod hooking out its small, bent finger. New England was moving away fast and became the eastern seaboard of the United States even as I watched.

The moonlight gave it a sort of unhealthy dimness, just enough to make out details and recognize the North and South American continents when they grew out of the eastern seaboard. The western coast was a little dark and blurry, but it made me homesick for the days when Fatty and Edna and I sat next to a map looking just like that in school.

Right then, I couldn't think of anything more absolutely enjoyable than standing near Edna in the grocery while she nagged the sass off me.

"That's what happened," Fatty was whimpering. "That's why we fell and the water jumped into the boat. We just shot up in a straight line suddenly and we're still traveling—us, the sloop, and enough water to float the whole business. We're inside a gray ball that isn't made of anything and which we can't break out of even if we still wanted to."

"Take it easy, Fatty, and we'll be all right," I told him with all the assurance of a bank robber trying to explain to the policeman who caught him that he was only trying to deposit his gun in the vault and the cashiers misunderstood him.

We sat down heavily in the cockpit and Fatty automatically grabbed the tiller. He sighed and shook his head.

"I feel just like a package being sent someplace." He gestured up towards the spot of changing color. "And that's the label. Please do not open until Christmas."

"What is it, do you think? An invasion from another planet?"

"And we're the first battle? Don't be silly, Paul. Although it could be at that. We could be a sample being sent back to headquarters to give them an idea of how tough a nut Earth might be. The careless, offhand way that green whatnot acted is what gripes me! It was as if he was going after Mike's Casino first and then decided to take us because we were closer, or because our disappearance would attract less notice than a night-club's. But either way it didn't matter much. He did it and went back home, or—"

"I can still hear Mike's Casino. At least I can hear the band playing 'Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?'"

Fatty slanted his big, loose face at the mast. "I hear it too. But it's coming from that box with the wheels up there. This whole thing is so crazy, Paul, that I actually think that creature knew it was your favorite song and fixed the box to play it all the time. So you'd be more comfortable, kind of. Like the glow we have inside the bubble to provide us with light. He wants the package to arrive in good condition."

"A space-going juke-box," I muttered.

CHAPTER III

On To Mars, Via Bubble

There was a longish bit of silence after that. We sat and watched the stars go by. I tried to make out the Big Dipper but it must have been lost in the shuffle, or maybe its position was different up here. The moon was shrinking off to port, so I decided we weren't going there. Not that it made much difference. But at least there was an Army base on the moon and I've seen enough western films to have great confidence in the United States Army—at least in the cavalry part. The sun wasn't a pleasant sight from empty space.

The funny thing is that neither of us were really frightened. It was partly the suddenness with which we'd been wrapped up and mailed, partly the care that was being taken of us. Inside the bubble there was a glow like broad daylight, strong enough to read by.

Fatty sat and worried about the option on the Winthrop store he'd lose if he didn't pick it up in time. I figured out explanations for Edna on why I didn't make it home by eleven. The box on top and the box on bottom hummed and mumbled. The sloop maintained the position it had originally had in Cassowary Cove, perfectly steady in the water. Every once in a while, Fatty bit a fingernail and I tied a shoelace.

No, we weren't really frightened—there didn't seem to be anything solid enough to get frightened about, sitting in a sailboat out there with trillions of tiny lights burning all around. But we sure would have given our right arms clear up to our left hands for a sneak preview of the next act.

"One consolation, if you can call it that," Fatty said. "There's some sort of barrier two or three million miles from the Earth and this contraption may not be able to get past it. The papers don't say exactly what the space ships hit out here, but I gathered it was something that stopped them cold, but didn't smash them and allowed them to turn and come back. Something like—like—"

"Like the stuff this gray bubble is made of," I suggested. We stared at each other for a few minutes, then Fatty found an unbitten nail on one of his fingers and took care of it, and I tied both my shoelaces.

We got hungry. There was nothing in our pockets that could be eaten. That made us hungrier.

Fatty lumbered over to the side and looked down into the water. "Just as I thought. Hey, Paul, break out your fishing tackle. There's a mackerel swimming around under the boat. Must have been caught up with us."

"Fishing'll take too long. I'll net it." I undressed, grabbed my landing net. "There's not much water and he won't have maneuvering space. But what about a fire? If we try to cook it, won't we use up the air?"

He shook his head. "Nope. We've been in long enough for the air to foul if it wasn't being changed. It's as fresh as ever. Whatever that machinery is up there, it's not only tooling us along at a smart clip and playing 'Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?' for your special benefit, but it's also pumping fresh air in and stale air out. And if you ask me where it gets oxygen and nitrogen in empty space—"

"I wouldn't dream of it," I assured him.

As soon as I spied the mackerel, a small one, less than a foot long, I stepped into the water and went for it with the net. I'm a pretty good under-water swimmer.

Pretty good, but the mackerel was better More practise. I felt silly caroming off the keel and gray haze while the fish dodged all around me. After a while, he got positively insulting. He actually swam backwards, facing me, just out of reach of the net.

I came to the surface, swallowed air, and climbed back aboard.

"He's too spry," I began. "I'll get my fishing gear and—"

I stopped. I was back in the gulping groove again.

Fatty was sitting in the cockpit, looking as if he had sat down suddenly. In front of him there was a flock of plates, six glasses and two snowy napkins on which rested assorted knives, forks and spoons.

There were two glasses of water, two glasses of milk and two glasses of beer. The plates were filled with food: grapefruit, soup, beef steak, French fried potatoes, green peas, and—for dessert—ice cream. Enough for two. Our dream meal.

"It came from the box above," Fatty told me as I dressed with clumsy fingers. "I heard a click and looked up. There was this stuff floating down in single file. They distributed themselves evenly as they hit the deck."

"At least they feed you well."

Fatty grimaced at me. "You know where else you get served a meal with everything your heart desires."

Well, we unwrapped the cutlery and ate. What else could we do? The food was delicious, perfectly cooked. The drinks and the ice cream were cold, the grapefruit was chilled. When we finished, there was another click. First, three cigars that I remembered smoking at Louisa Capek's birthday party and liking more than any others I'd ever had, then, a plug of Fatty Myers's favorite chaw appeared. When the matches breezed down, we had stopped shrugging our shoulders. Fatty talked to himself a little, though.

I was halfway through the first cigar when Fatty heaved himself upright. "Got an idea."

He picked up a couple of plates and heaved them over the side. We both stood and watched them sink. Just before they got to the bottom—they disappeared. Like that. About two feet away from the lower box.

"So that's what happens to the waste."

"What?" I asked him.

He glared at me. "That."

We got rid of the rest of the service in the same way. On Fatty's suggestion we kept the knives. "We might need weapons when we arrive where—where we're going. Characters there might want to dissect us, or torture information out of us about Earth."

"If they can pull this kind of stuff, do you think we can stop them?" I wanted to know. "With knives that they made up for us out of empty emptiness?"

But we kept the knives.

We also kept the mackerel. For a pet. If we were going to be fed this as a steady diet, who wanted mackerel? There were only the three of us in that bubble and we felt we all had to stick together. The mackerel felt it too, for he began swimming up near the surface whenever we came close to the side. We became pretty good friends, and I fed him the bait I'd brought along—free.

About four hours later—it may have been five, because neither Fatty nor I had watches—the box clicked and the same meal wafted down with all the fixings. We ate some and threw the rest overboard.

"You know," Fatty said. "If it weren't for that 'Did Your Mother Come From Ireland' playing over and over, I could almost be enjoying myself."

"Yeah. I'm getting tired of it myself. But would you rather be listening to 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles?'"

The Earth was just a shrinking, shining disc but neither of us could resist grabbing a fast look at it, now and then. It meant my grocery and Edna, Fatty's service station and his option on the Winthrop store. Home, 'mid planets and galaxies....

We got sleepy and pulled down the sails which weren't being overwhelmingly useful at the time. We rolled them up into a sort of mattress and, together with some blankets Fatty had in the cockpit, made ourselves a fairish bed.

When we woke out of a mutual nightmare in which Fatty and I were being dissected by a couple of oyster stews, there were two complete steak dinners on deck. That is, two for me and two for Fatty. We had a grapefruit and a glass of milk apiece and got rid of the rest. We lounged around uncomfortably and cursed the composer of 'Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?' I couldn't understand how I'd ever liked that song.

I didn't think too much of the sloop, either. It was one of the most idiotic boats I'd ever seen, narrow, hard, uninteresting lines. If I ever bought a boat it wouldn't be a sloop.

We shucked our clothes off and went for a swim around the edges. Fatty floated on his back, his immense belly rising above the surface, while I dived down and played tag with the mackerel.

Around us was nothing but the universe. Stars, stars and still more stars. I'd have given anything for a street-light.

We climbed back in the boat to find another steak dinner waiting. The swim had made us hungry, so we ate about a quarter of it.

"Not very efficient," Fatty grumbled. "I mean that green monster. Some way or other—telepathy, maybe—he figured we liked certain things. Steak dinners, special tobacco, a song. He didn't bother to go into it any further and find out how much of those things we liked—and how often. Careless workmanship."

"Talk about carelessness," I shot at him. "You wanted to go out and take a look at him when he first came into the cove. You were at the tiller and couldn't even get us about in time. You didn't see he was chasing us until he was abreast!"

His little eyes boiled red. "I was at the tiller, but what were you doing right then? You were pretty unoccupied and you should have seen him coming! But did you?"

"Hah! You thought he was a Portuguese Man-of-War. Like the time we were shingling the church roof and you thought that the black spot near the steeple was a sheet of metal when all the time it was only a hole. We wouldn't have fallen past the beam either, if you weren't such a big fat slob."

Fatty stood up and waved his stomach at me. "For a little hen-pecked squirt, you sure—Hey, Paul, don't let's get going this way. We don't know how long we may have to be together on this flea-bitten rowboat and we don't want to start arguing."

He was right. I apologized. "My fault, that church roof—"

"No, my fault," he insisted generously. "I was a little too heavy at that moment. Shake, old pal, and let's keep our heads. We'll be the only representatives of humanity wherever we're heading, and we have to stick together."

We shook and had a glass of beer on it.

All the same, it did get tight as steak dinner followed steak dinner and 'Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?' went through chorus after chorus. We carved a checkerboard out of some deck-boards and tore up old newspaper to make checkers. We went for swims around the boat, and we made up little guessing games to try on each other. We tested the gray haze and thought up a thousand different ways that the boxes might be working, a thousand different explanations of the spot of color near the top, a thousand different reasons for our being bubbled and sent out into the wild black yonder.

But we were down to counting stars when the red planet began to grow large.

"Mars," Fatty said. "It looks like the picture of Mars in the article Professor Fronac had in the Sunday supplement."

"I wish he were here instead of us. He wanted to go to Mars. We didn't."

There wasn't a cloud in the sky at Mars as we came down through the clearest air I've ever seen. We landed ever so gently in a flat desert of red sand. On all sides of the gray ball we could see acres on acres of sand.

Nothing else.

"Don't know if this is much of an improvement on what we've been through," I remarked morosely.

Fatty wasn't listening. He was standing on his toes and staring around eagerly.

"We're seeing what no man has ever seen before us," he said softly. "We're on Mars, do you understand, Paul? The sun—notice how much smaller it looks than on Earth? What wouldn't Professor Fronac give to be in our shoes!"

"He can have mine any time he shows up. And I'll throw in a new pair of soles and heels. Looking at a red desert isn't my idea of a really big time, if you know what I mean. Fails to give me a bang. And where are the Martians?"

"They'll show, Paul, they'll show. They didn't send us forty million miles just to decorate their desert. Hold your horses, feller."

But I didn't have to hold them long. Off at the edge of the horizon, two specks appeared, one in the air and coming fast, and one mooching along the ground.

The speck in the air grew into a green and bulbous mass about the size of the one in Cassowary Cove. It didn't have any wings or jets or any other way of pushing itself along that I could see. It just happened to be flying.

When it reached us, the one on the ground was still far away.

Our new buddy had eyes, too—if that's what they were. Only they weren't black dots floating inside it; they were dark knob-like affairs stuck on the outside. But they felt just the same as the other when it paused on top of our bubble—as if they could undress our minds.

Just a second of this. Then it moved to the box, fiddled with it a moment and the music stopped. The silence sounded wonderful.

When it slid round to the bottom, going down through the sand as if the desert was made of mirage, Fatty handed me a couple of the knives we'd saved and picked out three for himself.

"Stand by," he whispered. "It may come off any minute now."

I didn't make any sarcastic crack about the usefulness of such weapons because I was having trouble breathing. Besides, the knives gave me a little confidence. I couldn't see where we might go if we happened to have a battle with these things and won, but it was nice holding something that could conceivably do damage.

By this time, the guy on the ground had arrived. He was in a one-wheeled car that was filled with wires and gadgets and crackly stuff. We didn't get a good glimpse of him until he stepped out of the car and stood stiffly against it.

When we did, we didn't like it. This whole play was getting peculiar.

He wasn't green and he wasn't bulbous. He was about half our height, very thin, shaped like a flexible cylinder. He was blue, streaked with white, and about a dozen tentacles trailed out from the middle of the cylinder under a battery of holes and bumps that I figured were the opposite number of ears, noses and mouths.

He stood on a pedestal of a smaller cylinder that seemed to have a sucking bottom to grip the sand.

When our green friend had finished working on the underside, he came tearing up to Jo-Jo near the car. Jo-Jo stiffened even more for a second, then seemed to get all loose and flexible and bent over, his tentacles drooping on the sand.

It wasn't a bow. It reminded me more of the way a dog fawns.

"They could have two intelligent races here on Mars," Fatty suggested in a low voice.

Then, while the tentacled chap was still scraping desert, the blob of green lifted and skimmed away in the direction he'd come. It was exactly like the business back in Cassowary Cove, except this time it was flying away while back on Earth it had zoomed along the water and submerged. But both were done so quickly and carelessly as to be positively insulting. After all, I'm not exactly small potatoes in my part of the country: one of my ancestors would have come over on the Mayflower if he hadn't been in jail.

This cylinder character turned and watched until the jellyfish was out of sight. Very slowly, he turned back again and looked at us. We shuffled our feet.

CHAPTER IV

A Brief Dreef On Mars

Our visitor began piling equipment out of the car and on the sand. He fitted this in that, one doojigger into another doohickey. A crazy-angled, shiny machine took shape which was moved against our little gray home away from home. He climbed into it and twirled thingumajigs with his tentacles.

A small bubble formed around the machine, attached to the gray haze.

"Air-lock," Fatty told me. "He's making an air-lock so that he can come in without having our air belch into the desert. Mars has no atmosphere to speak of."

He was right. An opening appeared in the grayness and Kid Tentacles sucked through slightly above water level. He was suspended in the air like that for a while, considering us.

Without warning, he dropped down into the water—only he splashed—and out of sight. We hurried to the side and looked down.

He was resting on the bottom, all his tentacles extended out at the mackerel which was scrounged up hard against the wall of gray, its tail curved behind it. A bunch of bubbles dripped up to the surface from the cylinder's mid-section and burst.

I didn't get it. "Wonder what he wants of that poor mackerel. He's sure scaring it silly. It must think he's the Grim Angler."

The moment I'd opened my mouth, the blue and white fellow started rising. He came up over the side and hit our deck with a wet sound from the base of his pedestal.

A couple of tentacles uncoiled at us. We moved back. One of the holes in his mid-section expanded, twisted like a mouth in the middle of a stutter. Then in a rumbling, terrifically deep bass:

"You—ah—are the intelligent life from Earth? Ah, I did not expect two."

"English!" we both yelped.

"Correct language? Ah, I think so. You—ah, are New English, but English is correct language. This language has been dreefed into me—ah, dreefed is not right—so that I could adjust correctly. But excuse me. Ah, I only expected one and I didn't know whether you were marine or land form. Ah, I thought at first—Permit me: my name is Blizel-Ri-Ri-Bel."

"Mine's Myers," Fatty stepped forward and shook a tentacle, taking control of the situation as he always did. "This is my pal, Paul Garland. I guess you're here to give us the score?"

"To give you the score," Blizel echoed. "To adjust. To make the choice. To explain. To—"

Fatty raised a pudgy hand and headed him off. "What happened to the other Martian?"

Blizel coiled two of his tentacles into a braid. "No, ah, other Martian, that. I am Martian, ah, and representative of Martian Government. It-Of-Shoin is Ambassador from Shoin."

"Shoin?"

"Shoin. Galactic nation, ah, of which our system is a province. Shoin is nation of this galaxy and other galaxies. Ah, it in turn is part of larger nation whose name we do not know. It-Of-Shoin, the, ah, ambassador, has, ah, already decided which of you will be best but has not told me. Ah, I must make choice myself to prove partially our capabilities, ah, and our readiness to assume complete citizenship in Shoin. This is difficult as we, ah, are but five times as advanced as you, to round the numbers."

"You want to find out which of us is best? For what?"

"To stay as diplomatic functionary so that your people will be able to come here and there as they could now, but for the barrier of forces in balance which has been dreefed, ah, about your planet and satellite. This barrier has protected you from unwarranted intrusion, ah, as well as prevented you from unexpectedly, ah, appearing in a civilized part of Shoin to your detriment. It-Of-Shoin on your planet has been more interested in observing the development of the intelligent life-forms at the core of your planet than on its surface, no discredit, ah, intended. It-Of-Shoin was unaware you had acquired space travel."

"It-Of-Shoin on Earth," Fatty mused. "The one who sent us here. The Ambassador to Earth, hey?"

The Martian twisted his tentacles in genuine embarrassment. His white streaks got broader. "Ah, Earth does not require ambassador as yet. It-Of-Shoin is, ah, a—yes, a consul. To all the intelligent life-forms of, ah, Earth. Ah, I will return."

He plopped backwards into the smaller bubble which was his air-lock and started collecting machinery.

Fatty and I compared notes.

All of our galaxy and several others were part of a federation called "Shoin." Mars was practically ready to join or be accepted into the federation whose other members they considered pretty terrific operators. Earth was a backward planet and only rated a consul who was an "It-From-Shoin." He had a much higher regard for several other specimens of life he'd found on our planet than for man. Nevertheless, we'd surprised him by going out with space ships long before we should have. These ships hadn't been able to go anywhere else than the moon because of something called "forces-in-balance" which acted as a barrier both within and without.

For some reason, a representative of Earth was needed on Mars. This consul had scooted up one night and grabbed us off. When we'd arrived on Mars, the Shoinian ambassador had inspected us and decided which he wanted. Did that mean that one of us could return? And what about the other?

Anyways, he was too all-fired superior to tell the Martians which was the lucky man. He'd taught some government official our language by "dreefing" and it was up to the Martian from then on. The Martian, for all his humbleness, thought he was at least five times as good as we were. Finally, his English wasn't too good.

"Maybe he was only dreefed once," I suggested. "And it didn't take." I was nervous: we were still being treated too casually.

"What's with this dreefing?" Fatty asked Blizel when he plopped back on deck with a couple of tentacleloads of equipment.

"They-Of-Shoin alone can dreef. We, ah, of Mars must use machinery still. Dreef is not the image but a construction of an, ah, of a transliteration for your delight. They-Of-Shoin dreef by, ah, utilizing force-patterns of what you call cosmos? Thus any product can be realized into, ah, existence—whether material or otherwise. Now testing for you."

The Martian was presenting us with various gadgets on which colored lights flickered. We found that he wanted us to match switches with the colored lights in certain patterns but we couldn't seem to get any of them right.

While he was playing around with the toys, Fatty asked innocently what would happen if we refused to split up and leave one of us here. The Martian replied innocently: one of us would be left here, as we had no choice since we couldn't do a thing unless we were allowed to by them.

Fatty told him of the presence on Earth of very brilliant men who knew calculus and suchlike and would give both eyeteeth and maybe an eye or so for the chance to spend their lives on Mars. These men, he pointed out, would be much more interesting for the Martians to have around, maybe even for They-Of-Shoin too, than a small-town grocer and serviceman who had both flunked elementary algebra.

"Ah, I think," Blizel delicately commented, "that you overestimate the gulf between their intellects and yours, in our views."

Fatty was elected. His experience with motors turned the trick. I congratulated him. He looked nauseously at me.

Blizel withdrew, saying that he expected Fatty to go with him on a little trip to their "slimp"—which we decided was a city of sorts. He would bring Fatty back to "ah, organize farewell" if it turned out that Fatty was the right candidate. He was awfully nervous about the whole proposition himself.

Fatty shook his round head at the Martian who was building a small bubble outside of ours for transportation purposes.

"You know, we can't really blame those guys. They have troubles of their own, after all. They're trying to get into a galactic federation on equal terms with some big-shots and they want to prove themselves. They feel like rookies going into a game with a world-series pitcher to bat against. But I don't get the way they crawl and suck around these Shoiners. They need a little backbone. When you come right down to it, they're nothing but exploited natives, and everyone thinks we'll be the same, but on a lower level."

"Wait'll we get here. We'll stiffen these Martians, Fatty. We'll get the system free of galactic imperialists, with our atom bombs and all. Bet our scientists have this forces-in-balance thing licked in no time. And dreefing, too."

"Sure. Think of it—another life-form, maybe more than one, in the core of the Earth with this It-From-Shoin leading them not into the path of temptation. Golly! And these Martians here with their civilization, and no telling what other intelligent characters we have scattered between Mercury and Pluto. A whole empire, Paul, bigger than anything on Earth—all controlled by those green jellies!"

Blizel finished building the bubble and Fatty went into it through the air-lock. It was darker than the one he left behind. I guessed Blizel wasn't as skilled as that fellow down in Cassowary Cove.

The Martian got back into his machine and started off. Fatty's bubble floated along above it.

I spent about ten or twelve hours on Mars alone. Night fell, and I watched two moons chase across the sky. Some sort of big snake wriggled up out of the sand, looked at me and went away on his own private big deal.

No more steak dinners came down, and I actually found myself missing the stuff.

When Fatty and Blizel returned, the Martian stayed outside and tinkered with the equipment. Fatty came back through the air-lock slowly.

He was licking his lips and sighing in half breaths. I got scared.

"Fatty, did they harm you? Did they do anything drastic?"

"No, Paul, they didn't," he said quietly. "I've just been through a—well, a big experience."

He patted the mast gently before continuing. "I've seen the slimp, and it's really not a city, not as we understood cities. It's as much like New York or Boston as New York or Boston is like an ant-hill or bee-hive. Just because Blizel spoke our language and spoke it poorly, we had him pegged as a sort of ignorant foreigner. Paul, it's not that way at all. These Martians are so far above us, beyond us, that I'm amazed. They've had space travel for thousands of years. They've been to the stars and every planet in the system that isn't restricted. Uranus and Earth are restricted. Barriers.

"But they have colonies and scientists on all the others. They have atomic power and stuff after atomic power and stuff after that. And yet they look up to these fellows from Shoin so much that you can just begin to imagine. They're not exploited, just watched and helped. And these fellows from Shoin, they're part of a bigger federation which I don't quite understand, and they're watched and guarded and helped too—by other things. The universe is old, Paul, and we're newcomers, such terribly-new newcomers! I wonder what it will do to our pride when we find it out."

There was a dollop of quietness while Fatty slapped the mast and I frowned at him. They must have done something to the poor guy, his backbone had done slipped right out. Some devilish machine, they probably had. Once Fatty was back on Earth he'd be normal again—the same old cocky Fatty Myers.

"Are—are you acceptable?"

"Yeah, I'm acceptable. The ambassador—It-From-Shoin," he said with more respect in his voice than I'd ever heard before, "says I'm the one he picked. You should have seen the way Blizel and his crowd bucked up when they heard that! Now you have to get back to Earth. Blizel will fix the bubble so you'll have more variety in your meals and can let them know what's what. When humans start coming here regularly, they can appoint another man to handle affairs and, if he's acceptable to Shoin and Mars, I can go back."

"Fatty, what if I can't get anyone to believe me?"

He shrugged. "I don't know what happens in that case. Blizel tells me that if you can't operate successfully enough to get man through the barrier in a riz or two, they will conclude that he isn't enough of an intellect as yet to warrant their interest. You've just got to do it, Paul, because I don't know what happens to me if you don't, and from what I can see, nobody up here cares much."

"Meanwhile, you'll be all right?"

"I'll be preparing a sort of city for Earthmen to live in on Mars. If you send any folks in the right channels, I'm supposed to verify them and greet them when they arrive. I'll explain the setup as one human to another. Makes me out as an official greeter, doesn't it?"

After Blizel finished tinkering with the boxes, he applied another spot of color near the top and I shot away from Mars. The return trip was pretty boring, and the mackerel died on the way. There were a lot of different dishes served, and I was able to keep up my interest in food, but everything had a soapy taste.

Blizel just wasn't up to that guy in Cassowary Cove—no two ways about it.

I landed on the same spot from which we'd taken off—two months before, as I found.

The bubble dissolved as I hit the water. I didn't bother to sail the sloop in, but dived off the deck and swam ashore.

It felt good to be able to swim a distance in a straight line.

It seems that there were folks who wanted to hold a funeral for us, but Edna had put her foot down. She insisted that so long as no wreckage was found, she'd consider me alive.

I'd probably turn up in Europe one fine day with Fatty, she told them.

So when I walked into the grocery, being Edna, she merely turned to face me. She asked me where I'd been. Mars, I said. She hasn't spoken to me since.

A reporter from our local paper interviewed me that night and wrote up a crazy story about how I'd claimed I had established consulates all over the solar system. I hadn't; I'd just told him my friend Fatty Myers was the acting-consul for Earth on Mars.

The story was reprinted in one of the Boston papers as a little back-page squib with a humorous illustration. That's all. I've been going crazy since trying to get someone to believe me.

Remember, there's a time limit: one riz, two at the most.

For the last time, then, to anyone who's interested in space travel after all I've said: Stop knocking yourself out trying to break through a barrier of forces-in-balance that isn't meant to be broken through. You have to come down to Cassowary Cove and take a boat out and wait for It-From-Shoin to appear. I'll help, and you can be sure that when it gets to him, Fatty Myers will verify and do whatever else is necessary. But you won't be able to go to Venus or Mars any other way.

You need a visa.

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