The second was: «Mars is inhabited.»
The third: «Correction to despatch 23-105: One survivor of
III
CAPTAIN WILLEM VAN TROMP was a man of humanity. He radioed ahead: «My passenger must not be subjected to a public reception. Provide low-gee shuttle, stretcher and ambulance, and armed guard.»
He sent his ship's surgeon to make sure that Valentine Michael Smith was installed in a suite in Bethesda Medical Center, transferred into a hydraulic bed, and protected from outside contact. Van Tromp went to an extraordinary session of the Federation High Council.
As Smith was being lifted into bed, the High Minister for Science was saying testily, «Granted, Captain, that your authority as commander of what was nevertheless a scientific expedition gives you the right to order medical service to protect a person temporarily in your charge, I do not see why you now presume to interfere with my department. Why, Smith is a treasure trove of scientific information!»
«I suppose he is, sir.»
«Then why — » The science minister turned to the High Minister for Peace and Security. «David? Will you issue instructions to your people? After all, one can't keep Professor Tiergarten and Doctor Okajima, to mention just two, cooling their heels.»
The peace minister glanced at Captain van Tromp. The captain shook his head.
«Why?» demanded the science minister. «You admit that he isn't sick.»
«Give the Captain a chance, Pierre,» the peace minister advised. «Well, Captain?»
«Smith isn't sick, sir,» Captain van Tromp said, «but he isn't well. He has never before been in a one- gravity field. He weighs two and a half times what he is used to and his muscles aren't up to it. He's not used to Earth-normal pressure. He's not used to
The science minister looked contemptuous. «If acceleration fatigue is worrying you, let me assure you, my dear Captain, that we anticipated that. After all, I've been out myself. I know how it feels. This man Smith must — »
Captain van Tromp decided that it was time to throw a tantrum. He could excuse it by his own very real fatigue, he felt as if he had just landed on Jupiter. So he interrupted.«
«Eh?»
«Smith … is … not … a …
«Huh? Explain yourself, Captain.»
«Smith is an intelligent creature with the ancestry of a man, but he is more Martian than man. Until we came along he had never laid eyes on a man. He thinks like a Martian, feels like a Martian. He's been brought up by a race which has nothing in common with us — they don't even have sex. He's a man by ancestry, a Martian by environment. If you want to drive him crazy and waste that “treasure trove,” call in your fat-headed professors. Don't give him a chance to get used to this madhouse planet. It's no skin off me; I've done my job!»
The silence was broken by Secretary General Douglas. «And a good job, Captain. If this man, or man- Martian, needs a few days to get adjusted, I'm sure science can wait — so take it easy, Pete. Captain van Tromp is tired.»
«One thing won't wait,» said the Minister for Public Information.
«Eh, Jock?»
«If we don't show the Man from Mars in the stereo tanks pretty shortly, you'll have riots, Mr. Secretary.»
«Hmm — You exaggerate, Jock. Mars stuff in the news, of course. Me decorating the Captain and his crew — tomorrow, I think. Captain van Tromp telling his experiences — after a night's rest, Captain.»
The minister shook his head.
«No good, Jock?»
«The public expected them to bring back a real live Martian. Since they didn't, we need Smith and need him badly.»
«Live Martians?» Secretary General Douglas turned to Captain van Tromp. «You have movies of Martians?»
«Thousands of feet.»
«There's your answer, Jock. When the live stuff gets thin, trot on the movies. Now, Captain, about extraterritoriality: you say the Martians were not opposed?»
«Well, no, sir — but they were not for it, either.»
«I don't follow you.»
Captain van Tromp chewed his lip. «Sir, talking with a Martian is like talking with an echo. You don't get argument but you don't get results.»
«Perhaps you should have brought what's-his-name, your semantician. Or is he waiting outside?»
«Mahmoud, sir. Doctor Mahmoud is not well. A — A slight nervous breakdown, sir.» Van Tromp reflected that dead drunk was the moral equivalent.
«Space happy?»
«A little, perhaps.» These damned groundhogs!
«Well, fetch him around when he's feeling himself. I imagine this young man Smith will be of help, too.»
«Perhaps,» van Tromp said doubtfully.
This young man Smith was busy staying alive. His body, unbearably compressed and weakened by the strange shape of space in this unbelievable place, was at last relieved by the softness of the nest in which these others placed him. He dropped the effort of sustaining it, and turned his third level to his respiration and heart beat.
He saw that he was about to consume himself. His lungs were beating as hard as they did at home, his heart was racing to distribute the influx, all in an attempt to cope with the squeezing of space — and this while smothered by a poisonously rich and dangerously hot atmosphere. He took steps.
When his heart rate was twenty per minute and respiration almost imperceptible, he watched long enough to be sure that he would not discorporate while his attention was elsewhere. When he was satisfied he set a portion of his second level on guard and withdrew the rest of himself. It was necessary to review the configurations of these many new events in order to fit them to himself, then cherish and praise them — lest they swallow him.
Where should he start? When he left home, enfolding these others who were now his nestlings? Or at his arrival in this crushed space? He was suddenly assaulted by lights and sounds of that arrival, feeling it with mind- shaking pain. No, he was not ready to embrace that configuration — back! back! back bevond his first sight of these others who were now his own. Back even before the healing which had followed first grokking[1] that he was not as his nestling brothers … back to the nest itself.
None of his thinkings were in Earth symbols. Simple English he had freshly learned to speak, less easily than a Hindu used it to trade with a Turk. Smith used English as one might use a code book, with tedious and imperfect translation. Now his thoughts, abstractions from half a million years of wildly alien culture, traveled so far from human experience as to be untranslatable.
In the adjoining room Dr. Thaddeus was playing cribbage with Tom Meechum, Smith's special nurse. Thaddeus had one eye on his dials and meters. When a flickering light changed from ninety-two pulsations per minute to less than twenty, he hurried into Smith's room with Meechum at his heels.
The patient floated in the flexible skin of the hydraulic bed. He appeared to be dead. Thaddeus snapped, «Get Doctor Nelson!»
Meechum said, «Yessir!» and added, «How about shock gear, Doc?»
