Space. It was published about three years ago.’
Ward shook his head doubtfully. They slowed down past the checkpoint at the gates and Cameron waved to the guard. ‘Is that the man who claims to have seen extra-terrestrial beings? Martians or ‘Venusians. That’s Kandinski. Not only seen them,’ Professor Cameron added. ‘He’s talked to them. Charles works at a caf in Vernon Gardens. We know him fairly well.’
‘He runs the other observatory?’
‘Well, an old 4-inch MacDonald Refractor mounted in a bucket of cement. You probably wouldn’t think much of it, but I wish we could see with our two-fifty just a tenth of what he sees.’
Ward nodded vaguely. The two observatories at which he had worked previously, Cape Town and the Milan Astrographie, had both attracted any number of cranks and charlatans eager to reveal their own final truths about the cosmos, and the prospect of meeting Kandinski interested him only slightly. ‘What is he?’ he asked. ‘A practical joker, or just a lunatic?’
Professor Cameron propped his glasses on to his forehead and negotiated a tight hairpin. ‘Neither,’ he said.
Ward smiled at Cameron, idly studying his plump cherubic face with its puckish mouth and keen eyes. He knew that Cameron enjoyed a modest reputation as a wit. ‘Has he ever claimed in front of you that he’s seen a… Venusian?’
‘Often,’ Professor Cameron said. ‘Charles lectures two or three times a week about the landings to the women’s societies around here and put himself completely at our disposal. I’m afraid we had to tell him he was a little too advanced for us. But wait until you meet him.’
Ward shrugged and looked out at the long curving peach terraces lying below them, gold and heavy in the August heat. They dropped a thousand feet and the road widened and joined the highway which ran from the Vernon’ Gardens across the desert to Santa Vera and the coast.
Vernon Gardens was the nearest town to the Observatory and most of it had been built within the last few years, evidently with an eye on the tourist trade. They passed a string of blue and pink-washed houses, a school constructed of glass bricks and an abstract Baptist chapel. Along the main thoroughfare the shops and stores were painted in bright jazzy colours, the vivid awnings and neon signs like street scenery in an experimental musical.
Professor Cameron turned off into a wide tree-lined square and parked by a cluster of fountains in the centre. He and Ward walked towards the cafs — Al’s Fresco Diner, Ylla’s, the Dome — which stretched down to the sidewalk. Around the square were a dozen gift-shops filled with cheap souvenirs: silverplate telescopes and models of the great Vernon dome masquerading as ink-stands and cigar-boxes, plus a juvenile omnium gatherum of miniature planetaria, space helmets and plastic 3-D star atlases.
The caf to which they went was decorated in the same futuristic motifs. The chairs and tables were painted a drab aluminium grey, their limbs and panels cut in random geometric shapes. A silver rocket ship, ten feet long, its paint peeling off in rusty strips, reared up from a pedestal among the tables. Across it was painted the caf’s name.
‘The Site Tycho.’
A large mobile had been planted in the ground by the sidewalk and dangled down over them, its vanes and struts flashing in the sun. Gingerly Professor Cameron pushed it away. ‘I’ll swear that damn thing is growing,’ he confided to Ward. ‘I must tell Charles to prune it.’ He lowered himself into a chair by one of the open-air tables, put on a fresh pair of sunglasses and focused them at the long brown legs of a girl sauntering past.
Left alone for the moment, Ward looked around him and picked at a cellophane transfer of a ringed planet glued to the table-top. The Site Tycho was also used as a small science fiction exchange library. A couple of metal bookstands stood outside the caf door, where a soberly dressed middle-aged man, obviously hiding behind his upturned collar, worked his way quickly through the rows of paperbacks. At another table a young man with an intent, serious face was reading a magazine. His high cerebrotonic forehead was marked across the temple by a ridge of pink tissue, which Ward wryly decided was a lobotomy scar.
‘Perhaps we ought to show our landing permits,’ he said to Cameron when after three or four minutes no one had appeared to serve them. ‘Or at least get our pH’s checked.’
Professor Cameron grinned. ‘Don’t worry, no customs, no surgery.’ He took his eyes off the sidewalk for a moment. ‘This looks like him now.’
A tall, bearded man in a short-sleeved tartan shirt and pale green slacks came out of the caf towards them with two cups of coffee on a tray.
‘Hello, Charles,’ Cameron greeted him. ‘There you are. We were beginning to think we’d lost ourselves in a timetrap.’
The tall man grunted something and put the cups down. Ward guessed that he was about 55 years old. He was well over six feet tall, with a massive sunburnt head and lean but powerfully muscled arms.
‘Andrew, this is Charles Kandinski.’ Cameron introduced the two men. ‘Andrew’s come to work for me, Charles. He photographed all those Cepheids for the Milan Conference last year.’
Kandinski nodded. His eyes examined Ward critically but showed no signs of interest.
‘I’ve been telling him all about you, Charles,’ Cameron went on, ‘and how we all follow your work. No further news yet, I trust?’
Kandinski’s lips parted in a slight smile. He listened politely to Cameron’s banter and looked out over the square, his great seamed head raised to the sky.
‘Andrew’s read your book, Charles,’ Cameron was saying. ‘Very interested. He’d like to see the originals of those photographs. Wouldn’t you Andrew?’
‘Yes, I certainly would,’ Ward said.
Kandinski gazed down at him again. His expression was not so much penetrating as detached and impersonal, as if he were assessing Ward with an utter lack of bias, so complete, in fact, that it left no room for even the smallest illusion. Previously Ward had only seen this expression in the eyes of the very old. ‘Good,’ Kandinski said. ‘At present they are in a safe deposit box at my bank, but if you are serious I will get them out.’
Just then two young women wearing wide-brimmed Rapallo hats made their way through the tables. They sat down and smiled at Kandinski. He nodded to Ward and Cameron and went over to the young women, who began to chatter to him animatedly.
‘Well, he seems popular with them,’ Ward commented. ‘He’s certainly not what I anticipated. I hope I didn’t offend him over the plates. He was taking you seriously.’
‘He’s a little sensitive about them,’ Cameron explained. ‘The famous dustbin-lid flying saucers. You mustn’t think I bait him, though. To tell the truth I hold Charles in great respect. When all’s said and done, we’re in the same racket.’
‘Are we?’ Ward said doubtfully. ‘I haven’t read his book, Does he say in so many words that he saw and spoke to a visitor from Venus?’
‘Precisely. Don’t you believe him?’
Ward laughed and looked through the coins in his pocket, leaving one on the table. ‘I haven’t tried to yet. You say the whole thing isn’t a hoax?’
‘Of course not.’
‘How do you explain it then? Compensation-fantasy or—’
Professor Cameron smiled. ‘Wait until you know Charles a little better.’
‘I already know the man’s messianic,’ Ward said dryly. ‘Let me guess the rest. He lives on yoghurt, weaves his own clothes, and stands on his head all night, reciting the Bhagavadgita backwards.’
‘He doesn’t,’ Cameron said, still smiling at Ward. ‘He happens to be a big man who suffers from barber’s rash. I thought he’d have you puzzled.’
Ward pulled the transfer off the table. Some science fantast had skilfully pencilled in an imaginary topography on the planet’s surface. There were canals, craters and lake systems named Verne, Wells and Bradbury. ‘Where did he see this Venusian?’ Ward asked, trying to keep the curiosity out of his voice.
‘About twenty miles from here, out in the desert off the Santa Vera highway. He was picnicking with some friends, went off for a stroll in the sandhills and ran straight into the space-ship. His friends swear he was perfectly normal both immediately before and after the landing, and all of them saw the inscribed metallic tablet which the
