FROM AN UNSEEN CENSOR
By ROSEL GEORGE BROWN
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine September 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
You can't beat my Uncle Isadore—he's
dead but he's quick—yet that is just
what he was daring me to try and do!
Uncle Isadore's ship wasn't in bad shape, at first glance. But a secondlook showed the combustion chamber was crumpled to pieces and the jetswere fused into the rocks, making a smooth depression.
The ship had tilted into a horizontal position, nestling in the hollowits last blasts had made. Dust had sifted in around it, piling over thealmost invisible seam of the port and filming the whole ship.
We circled around the ship. It was all closed and sealed, blind as abullet.
"Okay," Rene said. "He's dead. My regrets." He coughed the word out asthough it were something he had swallowed by accident.
"But how do you know?" I asked. "He might be in there."
"That port hasn't been opened for months. Maybe years. I told you theconverter wouldn't last more than a month in dock. He couldn't livelocked up in there without air and water. Let's go." My guide had nofurther interest in the ship. He hadn't even looked to see what theplanet was like.
I stood shivering in my warm clothes. The ship seemed to radiatea chill. I looked around at the lumpy, unimaginative landscape ofAlvarla. There was nothing in sight but a scraggly, dun heathersprouting here and there in the rocks and dust, and making hirsutepatches on the low hills.
I had some wild idea, I think, that Uncle Izzy might come saunteringnonchalantly over the hills, one hand in the pocket of a grilch-downjacket and the other holding a Martian cigarene. And he would have onhis face that look which makes everything he says seem cynical andslightly clever even if it isn't.
"The scenery is dull," he might say, "but it makes a nice back-drop foryou." Something like that, leaving the impression he'd illuminated aside of your character for you to figure out later on.
Nothing of the kind happened, of course. I just got colder standingthere.
"All right," Rene said. "We've had a moment of silence. Now let's go."
"I—there's something wrong," I told him. "Let's go in and seethe—the body."
"We can't go in. That ship's sealed from the inside. You think theymake those things so any painted alien can open the door and shoot inpoisoned arrows? Believe me, he has to be inside if those outsideports are sealed. And he has to be dead because that port hasn't beenopened in months. Look at the dust! It's a fourth of the way up theport."
Rene lumbered over to it and blew away some of the lighter dust higherup.
"See that?" he asked.
"No."
He groaned. "Well, you'll have to take my word for it. It's a raindrop.Almost four months old. A very light rain. You could see the faint,crusted outline of the drop if you knew how to look."
"I believe you," I said. "I hired you because you know which side ofthe trees the moss grows on and things like that. Still...."
Rene was beginning to stomp around impatiently. "Still what?"
"It just isn't