No Life of Their Own and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak

Author:Clifford D. Simak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-01-19T21:39:05+00:00

Message from Mars

Originally named “Martian Lilies,” this story, which was apparently written in late 1939 or early 1940, was rejected by Amazing Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, and another magazine not named in Cliff’s journals before being accepted by Planet Stories late in 1942. The magazine paid Cliff a hundred dollars, and the story appeared its fall 1943 issue. In a way, readers can view this story as a reversal of the plot of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, as well as an extension of the idea underlying the Superman comic books (I know Cliff read Wells, but there’s no evidence that he ever read the Superman comics). But the most important thing about “Message from Mars” is that it contains, appropriately, the seeds of the later Simak novel All Flesh Is Grass.

—dww

I

“You’re crazy, man,” snapped Steven Alexander, “you can’t take off for Mars alone!”

Scott Nixon thumped the desk in sudden irritation.

“Why not?” he shouted. “One man can run a rocket. Jack Riley’s sick and there are no other pilots here. The rocket blasts in fifteen minutes and we can’t wait. This is the last chance. The only chance we’ll have for months.”

Jerry Palmer, sitting in front of the massive radio, reached for a bottle of Scotch and slopped a drink into the tumbler at his elbow.

“Hell, Doc,” he said, “let him go. It won’t make any difference. He won’t reach Mars. He’s just going out in space to die like all the rest of them.”

Alexander snapped savagely at him. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You drink too much.”

“Forget it, Doc,” said Scott. “He’s telling the truth. I won’t get to Mars, of course. You know what they’re saying down in the base camp, don’t you? About the bridge of bones. Walking to Mars over a bridge of bones.”

The old man stared at him. “You have lost faith? You don’t think you’ll go to Mars?”

Scott shook his head. “I haven’t lost my faith. Someone will get there … sometime. But it’s too soon yet. Look at that tablet, will you!”

He waved his hand at a bronze plate set into the wall.

“The roll of honor,” said Scott, bitterly. “Look at the names. You’ll have to buy another soon. There won’t be room enough.”

One Nixon already was on that scroll of bronze. Hugh Nixon, fifty-fourth from the top. And under that the name of Harry Decker, the man who had gone out with him.

The radio blurted suddenly at them, jabbering, squealing, howling in anguish.

Scott stiffened, ears tensed as the code sputtered across millions of miles. But it was the same old routine. The same old message, repeated over and over again … the same old warning hurled out from the ruddy planet.

“No. No. No come. Danger.”

Scott turned toward the window, stared up into the sky at the crimson eye of Mars.

What was the use of keeping hope alive? Hope that Hugh might have reached Mars, that someday the Martian code would bring some word of him.

Hugh had died … like all the rest of them.

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