Transcriber's Note:
This eBook was produced from the 1949 book A Martian Odyssey andOthers by Stanley G. Weinbaum, pp. 1-27. Extensive research did notuncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication wasrenewed.
Jarvis stretched himself asluxuriously as he could in the cramped general quarters of theAres.
"Air you can breathe!" he exulted. "It feels as thick as soupafter the thin stuff out there!" He nodded at the Martian landscapestretching flat and desolate in the light of the nearer moon,beyond the glass of the port.
The other three stared at him sympathetically—Putz, the engineer,Leroy, the biologist, and Harrison, the astronomer andcaptain of the expedition. Dick Jarvis was chemist of the famouscrew, the Ares expedition, first human beings to set foot on themysterious neighbor of the earth, the planet Mars. This, ofcourse, was in the old days, less than twenty years after the madAmerican Doheny perfected the atomic blast at the cost of his life,and only a decade after the equally mad Cardoza rode on it tothe moon. They were true pioneers, these four of the Ares. Exceptfor a half-dozen moon expeditions and the ill-fated de Lanceyflight aimed at the seductive orb of Venus, they were the first mento feel other gravity than earth's, and certainly the first successfulcrew to leave the earth-moon system. And they deserved thatsuccess when one considers the difficulties and discomforts—themonths spent in acclimatization chambers back on earth, learningto breathe the air as tenuous as that of Mars, the challenging ofthe void in the tiny rocket driven by the cranky reaction motorsof the twenty-first century, and mostly the facing of an absolutelyunknown world.
Jarvis stretched and fingered the raw and peeling tip of hisfrost-bitten nose. He sighed again contentedly.
"Well," exploded Harrison abruptly, "are we going to hearwhat happened? You set out all shipshape in an auxiliary rocket,we don't get a peep for ten days, and finally Putz here picks youout of a lunatic ant-heap with a freak ostrich as your pal! Spill it,man!"
"Speel?" queried Leroy perplexedly. "Speel what?"
"He means 'spiel'," explained Putz soberly. "It iss to tell."
Jarvis met Harrison's amused glance without the shadow of asmile. "That's right, Karl," he said in grave agreement with Putz."Ich spiel es!" He grunted comfortably and began.
"According to orders," he said, "I watched Karl here take offtoward the North, and then I got into my flying sweat-box andheaded South. You'll remember, Cap—we had orders not toland, but just scout about for points of interest. I set the twocameras clicking and buzzed along, riding pretty high—abouttwo thousand feet—for a couple of reasons. First, it gave thecameras a greater field, and second, the under-jets travel so far inthis half-vacuum they call air here that they stir up dust if youmove low."
"We know all that from Putz," grunted Harrison. "I wishyou'd saved the films, though. They'd have paid the cost of thisjunket; remember how the public mobbed the first moon pictures?"
"The films are safe," retorted Jarvis. "Well," he resumed,"as I said, I buzzed along at a pretty good clip; just as we figured,the wings haven't much lift in this air at less than a hundredmiles per hour, and even then I had to use the under-jets.
"So, with the speed and the altitude and the blurring causedby the under-jets, the seeing wasn't any too good. I could seeenough, though, to distinguish that